


Aim for the Moon

by Bumblie_Bee



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barnum needs help, But phillip helps Phineas get through it, Charity is a saint, Complete crack, Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Head Injury, Hurt P. T. Barnum, Hurt/Comfort, I kill off charity and im so sorry, Insecure Barnum, Magic Tricks, Multi, P. T. Barnum Needs a Hug, Phillip Carlyle Needs a Hug, Phillip does not, Phillip does not understand what is going on, Phineas as an upturned tortoise, Phineas is amused, Phineas loves the snow, Snowy shenanigans, Soulmates, Stop reordering my tags ao3!, TGSFanFicFeb2019, The fire scene, Worried Phillip Carlyle, hangovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 61,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17625509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblie_Bee/pseuds/Bumblie_Bee
Summary: Even if you miss, you'll be amongst the stars.A collection of, hopefully, 28 unrelated fics as my contribution to FanFicFeb on the other side discord server.I have tagged this as gen and with no archive warnings as this applies to a majority of the chapters, but any warnings that are needed for certain prompts are in the contents page and chapter summary.





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

> FanFicFeb! 
> 
> Apologies in advance for any mistakes, typos, or forgotten keyboard mushes. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A contents page, even though it throws the numbering and I hate that so much!!! Happy, Lynxx? -*raises eyebrows*-

Day 1- First Meeting (Gen | Phineas & Phillip, Phineas/Charity | Friendship)

A hungover and slightly regretful Phillip gets to meet two small tornados in matching pink coats.

 

Day 2 – Vertigo (Gen| Phineas/Phillip | Hurt/comfort)

Phineas wakes to find himself injured and alone on the street. Continued in Day 3.

 

Day 3 – Missing Memories (Gen | Phineas/Phillip |Hurt/comfort)

Phillip worries whilst Phineas deals with the aftermath of his head injury.

 

Day 4 – Tracks (Gen | Phineas & Phillip, mentioned Phineas/Charity | Light angst)

Phillip learns about his boss’s history when they take a trip on the train.

 

Day 5 – Fluff (Gen | Phineas/Phillip | Fluff)

Phillip begins to question the sanity of his hysterically laughing partner when he realises what is amusing him.

 

Day 6 – “Are you sure?” (Gen | Very early Phineas/Charity | Angst)

Emotions run high when Phineas and Charity reunite five years after they last saw each other.  

 

Day 7 – Crossover/AU (Gen | No pairings | Crack)

Phillip finds two men escaping from the lions’ pen with what they say is a time machine clutched in one of their hands.

 

Day 8 – Ice (Gen | Phineas/Phillip | Fluff)

After Phineas slips on the ice, Phillip realises the snow isn’t quite so unpleasant after all.

 

Day 9 – “Take me home.” (Teen | Phineas/Phillip | Angst)

Phineas comforts a drunken Phillip after a particularly bad conversation with his parents.

 

Day 10 – Facing your fear (Gen | Phineas & Phillip, established Phineas/Charity | Light hurt/comfort, bit of angst, a little banter)

Phillip helps an injured Phineas understand that sometimes its okay to show a little weakness. Continued in day 11.

 

Day 11 – “Left or right” (Gen | Phineas & his girls, Phineas/Charity | Light hurt/comfort, family fluff)

Charity finds her healing husband choosing to ignore his own discomfort in order to entertain his daughters. Continues from day 10.

 

Day 12 – Signs of affection (Gen | Phineas/Phillip | Light angst)

Phillip considers the signs of affection he sees in his new life at the circus.

 

Day 13 – Ashes (Gen | Phineas & Phillip, Phineas/Charity | Angst)

Phineas runs into a burning building with the aim of saving the life of his overcompensated apprentice.

 

Day 14 – Soulmate (Gen | None clearly established | Angst)

AU in which the writing of your soulmate appears on your arms. Phillip grows up reading the messages his much older, and apparently settled, soulmate leaves on his arms. He doesn’t reply. Continued in day 16.

 

Day 15 – Cruelty (Teen | Phineas/Charity, eventual Phineas/Phillip | Angst with a happy ending | Major character death)  

Phineas contemplates the cruelty he has seen and experienced throughout his life and eventually comes to a bit of a realisation when it comes to love. SEE WARNING ABOVE.

 

Day 16 – Harmony (Gen | Phineas/Charity, eventual Phineas/Phillip | Eventual happy ending)

AU in which the writing of your soulmate appears on your arms. Phillip slowly begins to find his place, amongst other things, at the circus. Continues from Day 14.

 

Day 17 – Outcast (Gen | Phineas/Charity exists but not mentioned | Angst)

Caroline’s thoughts on the other girls in her ballet class, and her position within, or not within, the group.

 

Day 18 – Child(ren) (Gen | Phineas/Charity exists | Erm, fluff, maybe?)

Phillip feels a little jealous as he watches Barnum play with his daughters at the circus.

 

Day 19 – Ambition (Gen | Phineas/Phillip | Lightly whumpy fluff)

Phineas decides learning the lyra at the age of 50 is a grand idea. Phillip has a word with him about the difference between ambition and stupidity.

 

Day 20 – Only One Bed (Gen | Phineas/Phillip | Soft sickfic)

An ill Phillip worries about sharing a bed with his partner and a caring Phineas rolls his eyes at his nonsense.

 

Day 21 – Solitude (Gen | Phineas/Charity | Angst)

Phineas stands alone in his empty home as he realises just how much damage him going on tour with Jenny has caused.

 

Day 22 – Retail (Gen | Not Mentioned | Crack)

Phillip is drawn from his office to find Phineas in the centre ring with a present for him.

 

Day 23 – Drink (Teen | Phineas/Phillip | Fluff)

Phineas is a drunken, amused mess. And an amusing one, it seems.

 

Day 24 – Whump (Teen | Phineas/Phillip | Hurt/Comfort)

Phineas protects his daughters from five nasty drunks on their way home from the circus. Continued in day 26.


	2. First Meeting

Phillip woke to a miner angrily chiselling away at the inside of his scalp. There was a taste in his mouth to match too, earthy and bitter and entirely unpleasant, and a sickness swirling in his stomach which didn’t quite fit with the mining analogy but was unwanted all the same. Not that any of it was unusual for him to wake with. He was, after all, unhealthily used to the symptoms of a hangover.

What was unusual though, he realised when he opened his eyes, was that he had no idea where he was. Nine times out of ten he woke in his bed, in his pyjamas more often than not, used enough to putting himself to bed under the influence that he made a pretty good job of doing it. He had woken on the floor a good few times too, often at the bottom of the stairs, usually having decided they were not worth the effort the night before, but occasionally bruised and sore, seeming to have attempted them and failed miserably. Sometimes he woke slumped beside the lavatory in the bathroom, the stomach of his drunken self clearly as unstable as that of his hungover self.

Just once he woken out on the street, slumped against the wall of the theatre, his wallet missing, but otherwise mercifully unharmed. He had briefly cut back a little on the whisky after that.

But on this occasion, he had realised when he opened his gritty eyes, he was laying on a sofa, a soft but aged one placed rather oddly in a simply furnished but highly cluttered office. The office, or what he assumed was meant to be an office, was filled with an odd assortment of colourful items and signs and pieces of cloth. Paper littered the floor, some appearing formal in a typed black script and others less so, covered with a scrawled, backwards sloping writing or rough sketches in both lead and brightly coloured pencils.

 The dark walls of the room were tacked with more paper, the drawings on the sheets of clothes in exotic designs and bright colours and designs of flyers or signs with bold fonts in red and green or animals or people, hand drawn and coloured with an amazing likeness to the real things. Some of the drawings, produced with less skill but just as much care, appeared to have been drawn by a child.

There was a desk in the room too, sitting beside the window with closed curtains that glowed with the morning sun and just about skimming the surface, and at that desk slumped a man. He looked to be asleep, bent over the desk with his arms folded on the lid, or on the paper that covered the surface technically, and his head rested on top of them. His face was turned away towards the curtain so all Phillip could see of his head was a distinctive shock of mussed and slightly curly dark hair.

Phillip groaned lowly as the night before, or what little of it he could remember, crawled back into his mind and he finally worked out who’s sofa in who’s office he was currently laying on. He sat up, swallowing bile as his stomach protested and then plucked a cushion from the other end of the sofa and threw it with surprising accuracy at the sleeping man at the desk.

Barnum startled awake as the cushion struck the back of his head, bolting upright with a sharp inhale and series of wince inducing pops and cracks from his spine.  He squinted in the dull light, briefly looking around the office with as much confusion as Phillip had before his eyes finally settle on the hungover man on his sofa.

 “Ah, good morning, Mr Carlyle,” he greeted brightly, his tone buoyant despite only waking seconds before but his voice as rough as Phillip felt. He yawned, tired despite his bight tone and ran a hand through his tousled curls leaving it sticking up in wild tufts. He looked a mess, his hair giving the appearance he had been dragged through a hedge backwards and his shirt rumpled and untucked, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and judging by the tightness surrounding his eyes and the pasty green colour that had taken over his complexion, the older man was feeling the after affects of the whisky too. Although, somehow, didn’t seem to be dealing with the same miner that was still busily working inside Phillip’s brain. Either that or he was simply fairing slightly better at hiding it.

“Sleep well?”

Phillip glared as much as his throbbing head would allow.

“Piss off,” he managed, eloquence lost in the hungover mess his mind had become.

Barnum raised his eyebrows disapprovingly.

 “I’ll leave you on the floor next time if you’re going to thank me like that,” he said, almost under his breath, casting a wry smile across the room at the man still slumped on his sofa. Phillip winced at his words and the idea of being intoxicated enough that he needed to be picked from the floor that they placed in his mind.

An amused grin grew on his lips at Phillip’s regretful expression and he chuckled and then yawned again and rubbed at his eyes, wincing as he pushed at the headache that likely resided there. After a second of rubbing at his head he sighed then stood and stretched, arching his broad back with hands over his kidneys and grimaces at the movement, his spine clearly not having appreciated a night spent huddled over his desk.

It took Phillip a moment to realise that Barnum’s apparently stiff back may not just be due to his unnatural sleeping position.

“What happened last night?” he asked cautiously, not entirely sure he did want to know how he ended up needing to be lifted to the sofa. Alcohol was the reason why, too much alcohol, but what he had done before passing out was the real worry. “I don’t remember...”

“Ah, that’ll be the whisky,” Barnum clarified ruefully, his expression slightly guilty, despite likely knowing how unnecessary his explanation was. He had certainly known enough about Phillip’s drinking habits the night before to know that he was well acquainted with the after effects of having more than a little too much to drink. “Mostly my fault, sorry about that.”

Phillip rolled his eyes at the almost insincere apology and then, regretting it, sunk back into the sofa and lifted a hand to his pounding head. A flicker of amusement passed through Barnum’s expression before he sighed thoughtfully and leant back against his desk, crossing one ankle over the other. He crossed his arms too, loosely holding onto his right bicep with his left hand in a pose that appeared so relaxed he might not have had a care in the world. Although, Phillip realised, maybe he didn’t, it wasn’t like he had been the one to effectively sign his inheritance away, convinced by a renowned fraud and half a bottle of whisky.

“Well, you now own 10% of a circus,” Barnum told him, right on cue. “Although I’d imagine you remember that part.” He paused expectantly, and Phillip found himself nodding obediently, wincing at both the rattling of his brain inside his skull and the memory. Despite the wince, he was surprised to find he wasn’t quite as troubled about having run away from his upper-class life to join the circus as he probably should be. He did, as Barnum had sung, feel a little freer, like a stifling weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and there was something almost satisfying about knowing there was little else he would be able to further do to disappoint his family.  

“After than we came back and watched my show, you seemed to enjoy it, particularly the trapeze act, if I’m remembering correctly.” his lips grew into a badly supressed smirk at his own words and Phillip, slow mind still thinking through syrup, finally remembered the flying pink haired marvel from the night before and the stumbling mess of a conversation he had had with her. He grimaced at the memory, and Barnum chuckled lightly.

“Don’t worry, Carlyle, you didn’t make _too_ much of a fool of yourself in front of her.”

Phillip hummed and raised an eyebrow, momentarily relieved before his hungover mind caught the significance of the ending of his sentence.

“And not in front of her?”

“Well, that would be telling.” Barnum’s supressed smirk grew into a mischievous grin. “Anyway, after the show we had a few more drinks with a select handful of members of my troupe, we sang, danced, were merry…” He rolled his hand, indicating ‘et cetera’, a thoughtful frown on his forehead and then shrugged, apparently giving up on remembering any more of what had happened at the impromptu party. “At some point you ended up passed out on the floor, so we called it a night.”

“And how did you not end up passed out on the floor too?”

“Ah, tricks of the trade,” he said lightly with a flick of his hand. His eyes glinted impishly but his expression was a little guilty, and about what Phillip was very slow to work out.

“Were you even drinking those shots at the bar?”

Barnum raised an eyebrow, making no attempt to hide his dishonesty.

“You bastard!”

The other man chuckled at that, looking pleased, and unfolded his arms to lean back on the desk.

“You said that last night too. And then threw peanuts at me.”

Phillip raised his eyebrows at his drunken self’s antics and, for a second, was going to apologise before remembering the man was solely responsible for the mess both his head and life had become overnight. The man also still seemed unusually cheerful for someone who had woken from a drunken stupor to find himself slumped over a desk in last night’s clothes. 

“Aren’t you married?” he asked instead, vaguely recalling seeing a photo of Barnum with a woman in the paper when he had first opened his museum. The older man looked up, his eyebrows furrowing a little, confused at the change of topic. Almost subconsciously he rubbed at the silver ring he wore with his thumb.

“I am.”

“But you’ve been here all night, too?”

The confusion on Barnum’s expression cleared. “Oh, Charity won’t have minded.” He flapped a hand dismissively as though spending the night passed out drunk in his office rather than at home with his wife wasn’t an unusual situation. Although, Phillip realised, maybe for him, it wasn’t.

“Did you even tell her you weren’t coming home?”

There was a shrug, and then, “Eh, she’s used to it.”

Phillip felt his own eyebrows furrow at that. “Your poor wife.”

There was moment and then Barnum grinned and raised an eyebrow and Phillip realised he might not quite have been telling the truth. He sighed and rubbed his aching head, leaning back into the soft worn cushions of the sofa. Barnum chuckled again, looking amused, before, very suddenly, breaking off his laughter to swear. His eyes widened almost comically, and he glanced around the room, searching for something unknown to Phillip, before finally darting over to where his waistcoat had ended up hanging up on what looked to be a half-painted wooden penguin. He pulled a pocket watch from somewhere in the heap of creased fabric and then, reading the time, swore again under his breath.    

“Late for a show?”

“No, but—”

Barnum was interrupted by a quick, sharp series of knocks at the door, and they only just had time to glace over to it before it was flung open to reveal two small tornados in matching pink coats, one almost hanging from the handle and the other pushing past her with the eagerness to enter the room.

“Daddy!” The younger of the two said, bounding up to Barnum with an energy to rival that of her father and leaping into his arms. He caught her, wincing a little but covering it enough that neither the girl in his arms nor the older, slightly calmer but equally enthusiastic one still standing beside the door seemed to notice.

“Girls, I told you to wait,” a kind voice cautioned from the doorway and Phillip looked round to see whom he assumed to be Charity Barnum entering the room, a tray containing two steaming mugs of what smelt like coffee in her hands. She was dressed much neater than her husband was, was Phillip’s first thought, her dress plain and elegant and free from the dirt and rumples of Barnum’s clothes and her hair neatly piled on the crown of her head in contrast to his mussed curls.

She surveyed the scene before her as she placed the tray on a rogue, rickety chair beside the half-painted penguin and then a small, faintly amused smile grew on her lips.

“Be gentle with your father, Helen, I’d imagine he has quite the headache.” She was good at reading her husband it seemed, or at least noticing the small lines of pain etched around his eyes. Either that or she knew exactly what he would be doing with his evening in advance. Which, judging by the mugs of steaming coffee she had come armed with, might actually have been a better explanation.

Barnum cast her a look of equal parts amusement and gratitude before his attention was pulled back to the girl partially vibrating with excitement in his arms.

“Is that him?” she asked, eyes bright and wide as her blonde head whipped round to glance at the sofa. It took Phillip a moment to realise it was him she was talking about. He frowned a little uncomfortably, feeling like he was already part of one of Barnum’s shows, and rubbed a hand through his hair. It felt a mess, he noticed for the first time that morning, his hungover brain previously too preoccupied with its miner to notice the state of his hair and the rumpled shirt he was still wearing from the night before. He tried to flatten the unruly tufts a little, suddenly self-conscious, before realising it was both futile and unnecessary. Besides, there was little chance it looked worse than Barnum’s gravity defying mop. 

“The man you wanted to get?” the blonde girl added, almost bouncing in her father’s grip.

“Did he say yes?” This question came from the older sister, the one seemingly quieter of the two. She reminded Phillip much more of her mother than her father, having both her slender build and calmer nature, although the mischievous glint in her eye as she glanced at him was entirely her father’s.

Phillip’s forehead creased further, confused by the questions of both the girls and the coffee brought by their mother, before he slowly realised that Barnum offering him a drink at the bar had clearly not been a spur of the moment decision but orchestrated in advance. Between that and the faked piano playing, which he had noticed, and the uneven number of shots they had taken, which he hadn’t, he was starting to wonder if anything Barnum did was honest. And yet, he found it difficult to get angry at the man.

“You’re beginning to live up to your reputation as both a conman and a bit of a fraud, you know,” he muttered, his tone annoyed but fond as he accepted the mug of coffee offered to him by Barnum’s amused wife.

Barnum himself cast him a grin, seeming to take being called both a fraud and a conman as a compliment, and then returned the daughter he was holding to the floor. He accepted a mug from his wife, pecking a kiss to her cheek as he accepted it, and crouched down between his two girls, an arm around each of their waists. They looked to almost be vibrating with the same relentless energy their father seemed to hold and all three of them had their eyes focused on the hungover mess of a man sitting uneasily on the tired, red sofa. Charity watched, her eyes on her husband, one eyebrow raised expectantly.

“Caroline, Helen,” Barnum said, his voice low and dramatic as he glanced between them, his eyes burning with uncontainable energy despite his hangover and his expression alight. “I’d like you to meet the newest member of P.T. Barnum’s Circus, Mr Phillip Carlyle.”


	3. Vertigo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything was spinning when Phineas opened his eyes. Or, not spinning, exactly, spinning sounded too regular, but the darkened world that surrounded him certainly wasn’t sitting very still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day two! Someone apologise to Phineas for me... Anyway, enjoy!

Everything was spinning when Phineas opened his eyes. Or, not spinning, exactly, spinning sounded too regular, but the darkened world that surrounded him certainly wasn’t sitting very still. It wasn’t exactly focused either, he realised, what little of what he could see in the dark blurred and squirmed in a way that made his stomach roll nauseously and he blinked hard, trying to clear the patterns from his vision.

Blinking hurt though, he found, stung sharply somewhere just above his eyebrow and was followed by the feeling of something warm and ticklishly creeping down beside his eye. He reached up to touch it, confused by the pain, to find his trembling fingers met something wet and dark and sticky covering much of the left side of his forehead.

An almost worrying long time passed before he could grasp it was blood, and it took even longer for his stumbling mind to associate it with the throbbing headache that had slowly been building in his temples.

Head injury. He had a head injury, he realised, suddenly understanding the pain and the blood and the sickening spinning of the blurred walls that surrounded him. There was a name for that, the spinning and dizziness, he knew, but his hazy, muddled brain couldn’t find it, barely capable of remembering his own name.

There was a lot he couldn’t remember, when he thought about it, important things he knew he should have considered before but hadn’t such as where was Phillip and what had happened to leave him slumped, apparently unconscious and bleeding from his head, against what felt to be a wall. He tried to think back and remember what he had been doing wherever he was, but his mind was muddled and slow and thinking hurt his already pounding head and he quickly relented.

He just hoped Phillip hadn’t been with him when whatever had happened had happened, or anyone else for that matter.

When was a mystery too him too. It was night, he assumed, judging by the darkness, and late, going by the emptiness of the street he was sitting in, but that wasn’t really much of a help in telling him the time. He was wearing his watch, the crown of it was digging almost uncomfortably into his ribs, but the act of searching under his jacket and coat for its blurred face seemed more effort than know the time was worth. A while must have passed since he was last indoors though, if the cold seeping through his coat and trousers was anything to judge by. His head was cold too, and he vaguely realised he seemed to be missing his hat. Shame, he thought distractedly, he liked his hats.

Where he was, at first though, seemed easier to answer, except the streets that surrounded him were swimming and blurry and what little he could work out looked unsettlingly unfamiliar. There were signs on the buildings that surrounded him, shops he assumed, and what looked to be a road name was just about visible on the building at the end of the street, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to encourage his muddled brain into reading either of them even if his hazy eyes were able to draw them into focus.  

What he did know, though, with absolute certainty was that he ought to go to the circus, to Phillip who was likely there. He wondered, vaguely, if Phillip was worrying, he tended to worry, a habit Phineas had been thus far unsuccessful in nipping, but with his head swimming and his memories missing it was impossible to tell if he had been gone for long enough for anyone to question or even notice his absence.

He needed to get back though, back to Phillip whether he had noticed he was missing or not, and so, slowly, he stood. It was a harder task than he had anticipated, even getting his feet under him enough to push from the ground required almost more coordination than he was capable of. But, eventually, he managed, successfully standing on shaking legs, a hand pressed to the wall in a vain attempt to hold his balance against the dizzying movement of the floor and the sickening spinning to the buildings that surrounded him.

The pounding in his head worsened with the effort, throbbing agonisingly in time with his heart with a pressure that made it feel almost fit to burst. His stomach rolled nauseously, apparently as unimpressed with the movement as his head had been, before unexpectantly rebelling violently, emptying its contents onto the road beside his feet.

Some splashed on his shoes but Phineas found he was too distracted by the crippling agony stabbing into his brain to care.

He breathed through the pain, slumping dizzily back against the wall with his head in his hands and the taste of bitter bile on his tongue, and waited for it to pass because there was little else he could do. Somewhere, deep in his tortured brain, he was impressed he was managing to stay standing. Gradually the flare of stabbing pain faded back to an almost bearable throb and the dizziness passed a little and the street stopped spinning quite so much. He let out a shuddering breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and tried to order his thoughts, to focus on the usually simple task of simply walking home.  

The thing was, he realised, getting home was a lot easier said than done when you had no idea where you were to begin with.

He leant his head back against the cold brick wall, forcing his sludgy, achy mind into gear as he tried to work out in which direction he should be heading. The still blurring streets gave him little indication, but the sky looked brighter to his right than his left and he decided that would be the way to go. Brighter was good, he reasoned; his circus was bright. They had a lot of lights. Too many, Phillip sometimes complained.

So, on that logic, he pushed himself from the wall, intending on heading towards the brighter patch of sky and hopefully his circus and Phillip, but stopped when the street span again and his previously somewhat settled stomach swirled. Bracing himself on the wall with one hand and holding the other to his pounding head, he closed his eyes against the sickening swimming of his vision.

Vertigo. That was the word he had wanted before. Not that remembering the name of it solved anything. The feeling slowly abated a little, enough that he could open his eyes without the risk of vomiting and so he started his stumble down the street towards the glow in the distance, one had still brushing the wall in an attempt to account for his currently questionably sense of balance.

He only made it three steps before his vision span again and the still blurry, but previously upright street lurched violently sideways and, too dizzy and uncoordinated to steady himself, he fell unforgivingly back to the floor. His head hit the cobbles hard enough to clatter his teeth and, in a flash of blinding pain, the darkness took him once again.  

 

 

TBC


	4. Missing Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one had any idea what had happened two nights before, least of all Phineas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day three! 
> 
> This follows on from yesterday's fic, the comfort to the hurt, I guess. 
> 
> Also, it's Barlyle, I caved.

Phineas woke to a headache and the feeling of a hand in his hair. The headache pulsed unpleasantly in time with his heartbeat, but the hand was gentle and soothing, tenderly carding its way through his loose curls. He groaned almost subconsciously and tilted his head into the feeling.

“Phin?” The voice, Phillip’s, his slow mind eventually provided, was quiet and soft and surprisingly concerned. “Are you awake?”

He was awake, kind of, but his head was hurting and spinning and his mind was sluggish, his thoughts meandering and hazy. He realised he didn’t want to be awake; unconscious had been much less unpleasant, but the concern hanging heavy in his partner’s tone stirred in his already squirming gut and he forced his heavy eyes to flutter begrudgingly open.

The dim light in what looked to be his office was almost blinding to his throbbing head, but he made his tired eyes stay wide and focus slowly on the worried man sat in a chair beside the sofa he was laying on.

“Phillip?” His voice was rougher than he expected it to be, his throat dry with disuse, and the name itself stumbled out in a slur. Phillip smiled fondly, his eyes still tight, and the hand left his hair as he stood. He went to the cluttered desk, what he did there Phineas’ tired eyes couldn’t see quite make out, and then returned with a small patterned glass containing what looked to be water. He sat back beside the sofa and then slid a hand gently under Phineas’ head whilst the other held the glass to his lips, letting him drink thirstily. The heavenly cool liquid soothed his dry throat and took some of the taste of grime from his mouth, but then, much too soon, it was gone, the glass withdrawn before he had taken his fill.

“More,” he murmured in protest, reaching one shaking hand up towards the glass.

Phillip shook his head, his expression torn, and gently pushed the hand he had raised back onto his chest.

“You can have more in a minute, just let that settle,” he countered, seeming somehow aware of the slightly nauseous feeling that was already growing in Phineas’ gut at even the small amount of water he had been allowed to consume. He tried to ignore the feeling, letting his muddled mind swim to the puzzle of waking sore and confused on his sofa with no memory of how he came to be there. He sifted through his memories in hope of finding something to explain it but the pain in his head flared sharply at the effort and he found himself groaning in misery, his eyes closing again.

Phillip shushed him quietly, the words lost in the haze of his mind but the tone soft and tender, and lifted his hand to gently card through the older man’s mussed hair once again. The hand helped, not taking away the pain but at least distracting him from the angered throbbing in his skull.

He wasn’t sure how long passed before his headache faded enough for him to bear reopening his eyes to the light of the room.

“What happened?” he mumbled when he had finally blinked his partner back into focus.

Phillip gave a small, tired smile, vague amusement eating into the worry that his expression held. 

“Constantine found you knocked out about a mile from the circus very early yesterday morning. I helped him bring you back here, we called the doctor who stitched up the cut on your head and told us to let you rest. You’ve been in and out of consciousness since last night, I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

Phineas hummed quietly, letting his muddled mind digest the new information. Being found unconscious certainly explained both the headache and the stinging patch on his temple and why he had no memories of ending up on his sofa. It explained the worried lines surrounding Phillip’s tired eyes too. What it didn’t explain though, was the almost rehearsed quality to Phillip’s words obvious enough that even his still swimming brain had managed to notice.

“Why did you sound like you’ve said that before?”

Phillip smiled sadly at the question.

“Because this isn’t the first time you’ve asked me that.”

“Oh.” Phineas’ eyes widened in realisation as ‘you’ve been in and out of consciousness since last night’ took on a whole new meaning before his expression dropped.

“I don’t remember,” he worried, his eyebrows furrowing into a frown. The cut on his forehead protested and he instinctively raised a hand to it, shaking fingers probing the neat line of tiny stitches holding the sore skin together, before Phillip raised a hand of his own and gently pried phineas’ away from his head. He kept hold of the hand after, his thumb drawing gentle circles over his knuckles.

“Hey, it’s okay, the doctor said he doubted you would remember much for a day or so, you’re very likely concussed. It’ll get better soon though, try not to worry,” he explained gently, his tone again a little rehearsed, and with what Phineas thought was probably meant to be an encouraging smile playing on his lips. Then he sighed a little thoughtfully. “You seem less confused this time, you know.”

Phineas hummed quietly, not wanting to know how he had been before if this counted as less confused, and then rolled his aching head into the pillow it was laying on. It was soft and smooth, and the off-white pillow case was slightly bloodstained, from his head, he assumed, and smelt rather distinctively of Phillip.

“This is your pillow?”   

Phillip looked a little surprised at his words and Phineas wondered if he had finally managed to vary from the script he had apparently been repeating.

“Yeah, sorry, you threw up on yours. I haven’t had time to wash it, so Lettie fetched mine.”

“Mmm, not complaining, ‘s nice,” he muttered, sighing contently despite his aching head and the new knowledge that he had at some point, apparently thrown up all over himself. He was almost pleased he couldn’t remember it. He breathed in the pillow, enjoying the familiar sweet scent.

Phillip huffed lightly beside him, sounding a little amused.

“I’m glad you approve,” he said and reached up to gently run a hand over his hair once again. He was smiling fondly but the worry was still hanging around his tired eyes. His whole appearance looked haggard, when Phineas thought about it, from the dark circles under his eyes and the dark stubble on his chin to his ruffled clothes and unusually unruly hair. It was sticking up in tufts as though he had been running his fingers through it.

“You’re tired?”

Phillip gave him a small smile.

 “I’ve had more important things on my mind than sleeping, Phin,” he sighed gently, sounding a little exasperated.

“You should rest more,” Phineas advised drowsily, his muddled mind thinking it would help. “You’re always telling me to rest more.” The words were a stumbled mess, barely recognisable to his own ears but Phillip must have known what he had said because he let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob and ran a shaking hand though his hair.

“How was I meant to rest, Phineas?” Phillip’s tone was suddenly upset, the softness lost and Phineas couldn’t help but flinch a little. “You’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness for days, you know, and every time you woke you were hurting and distressed and barely able to remember your own name! How could I sleep when you were like that?”

Phineas’ eyebrows furrowed, upset himself. He hadn’t mean to keep Phillip up. He hadn’t meant to worry him so either.

 “‘m Sorry,” he mumbled, looking up with wide, tortured eyes at his partner over the edge of the pillow. “Didn’t mean to worry you?”

Phillip looked to deflate at his words and then he shook his head, looking angry with himself.

“No, please don’t apologise. I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. I’m just tired and worried. It’s been a long few days.” He broke off with a sigh and rubbed at his eyes with a shaking hand before huffing ever so slightly as a small, sad smile slipped onto his lips. “I take it you’re feeling more like yourself now if you’re worrying about my lack of sleep though.”

Phineas hummed into the pillow, not knowing how else to answer. His head still throbbed, and he was both dizzy and a little nauseous but there seemed no need to correct and worry Phillip further. Besides, he might be feeling better than he had before; it wasn’t as if he could remember anything to compare. He imagined he must have had a hell of a headache though, if it had been bad enough for him to make a mess of his pillow.

He also realised, as he lay there, that although he knew how he had ended up waking on the tattered red sofa in his office, he still didn’t know how he had come to be found unconscious on a street a mile from the circus.

“What happened?”

Phillip’s expression fell, worry creasing his forehead, and his mouth opened a little like he wasn’t quite sure what to say. It took Phineas’ hazy brain longer than it should have to realise he had repeated the words he had said when he had first woken and the suddenly concerned expression of his partner suddenly made sense.  

“No, Phil, why was I unconscious?” His tongue stumbled a little over the words but what he was trying to say must have been clear because the younger man almost deflated with relief before he sighed and shook his head, his expression grim.

“I don’t know, Phin, no one does. Constantine found you alone on the cobbles, bleeding into the road from the cut on your head, so what happened before that is just a guess.” There was a pause and then he sighed and when he next spoke his tone was hesitant. “The doctor thinks you were attacked, but whoever did it didn’t take anything that we know of, so it wasn’t a robbing. It might have been protestors, but we can only speculate. We were hoping you would be able to remember.”

“I can’t even remember leaving the circus,” he admitted after a moment, able to recall performing the midday show on what he assumed to be the day he had been injured, but unable to remember anything after going back to his office to change out of his ringleader’s clothes.

Phillip looked concerned at his words, and perhaps a little upset too.

“You don’t remember going home? We had dinner together, don’t you recall?”

Phineas shook his aching head into the pillow. The movement hurt, his brain almost rattling against his sore skull, and he let out a half pained, half frustrated groan. He hated the frustratingly blank voids in his memory and the hazy meandering of his mind and the unrelenting dizziness and nausea that plagued him even whilst still. His head was pounding angrily again too, his brain aching against his too tight skull.

“I don’t like it, Phil,” he admitted thickly, his blurring hazel eyes focusing on the sad blue ones of his partner. The words came out sounding much more distressed than he had intended, and Phillip, his expression tormented, took his hand again and pressed it to his lips.

“Phin, it’s okay, you’ll feel better soon,” he reassured softly, his voice muffled by the hands at his mouth, “Why don’t you try and get some more sleep, hmm, it’ll help?”

Phineas sniffed and nodded, tired and emotional and hurting, and turned his head back into his comfortingly Phillip scented pillow. The younger man’s hand left his and placed it gently back on the sofa, his hand tenderly brushing his cheek as it left.

“Love you,” Phineas mumbled, sleep already starting to reclaim him and his muddled, aching brain not fighting it in the slightest.

“I know, you’ve already told me that tonight,” Philip agreed, a smile in his tone. His hand returned, carding through his curls once again. “And I love you too, Phineas Taylor Barnum.  I always will, even if you don’t quite remember me saying it.”  


	5. Tracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “These train tracks, I built them. Well, not just me, obviously.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 out of 28! I haven't whumped anyone in this one, proud? 
> 
> Enjoy!

“I built these tracks,” Barnum says thoughtfully as he stares out of the window of their compartment. Phillip looks up from the book he holds at the words, having heard them spoken but not really able to make them into any sense. It isn’t unusual for him to not understand what Barnum says to him; the words are always easy enough to understand - he is, after all, much more well read and therefore more familiar with the English language than the older man - but the message they are carrying often make little sense all the same.

Barnum’s mind is a wild place, he has learnt in the few short months he has been working at the circus, lightning paced and filled with fantastic, half formed ideas and semi-written songs and mythical stories almost worth of print. His train of thought changes very quickly too, almost dizzyingly so, Phillip has realised, in such a way that a conversation can go from one subject to another and back before he has barely worked out what Barnum is talking about in the first place. He finds he is getting used to it though, with each working day becoming a little more used to the wild working of his boss’s brilliantly flustered mind. He doubts he will ever understand the man completely, but then he also doubts anyone does.

The man likes to talk, Phillip has realised, about all sorts of subjects, excited by anything new or mysterious as a child and equally incapable of containing his thoughts. Not that Phillip minds; it’s unbelievably freeing to hear something other than gossip about the most recent scandal in the upper-class world. Not that he’ll be hearing much more of that; his own disappearance into the world of the circus is scandal enough to leave him both uninvited to the parties and very likely their main topic of conversation.

“Pardon?”

Barnum doesn’t look round at his question, but Phillip can see his almost distant expression in his reflection in the glass of the window. 

“These train tracks, I built them. Well, not just me, obviously.”

Barnum’s words draw him back to the train. The tone is a thoughtful, a little nervous even, an emotion so out of place in a man who normally seems so confident and full of himself Phillip has on occasion wondered how his head hasn't swollen so so large he’s unable to pass through a door. The words themselves are unusual too; as much as Barnum likes to talk, very little of what he says is about himself. He tells tales of things that have happened to him, a complaint about a shirt ruined by his spilt morning coffee or a story of an amusing confrontation he had on the train, and talks about his family a lot, lovingly of his wife and fondly of his two young daughters, but Barnum rarely talks about his own life and has told him told him almost nothing of his past.

This time though, his words sound almost like an invite so Phillip, curiosity buzzing, presses.

“You worked on the railway?”

Barnum hums and then finally turns to face him. He does indeed look thoughtful, his almost subdued expression a contrast to his normally overly animated energy. Phillip wonders if this is the real P. T. Barnum, the man behind the showman’s mask so to speak. He’s so used to the exhausting, almost endless supply of energy the man normally seems to posses that seeing him so quiet is a little unnerving.

He has seen Barnum still before, of course, they share an office and there is always paperwork to be done as much as the older man appears to loth it, but even when he is there, writing at his desk, he still seems to be in motion. He hums whilst he is working, a habit that Phillip feels he should find annoying yet doesn’t, and he twirls his pens between his fingers whilst thinking, occasionally sending one flying across the room, and his knees bounce under his desk when he is particularly restless. And yet, there in the train he was still, almost lost in his memories and looking, Phillip realised with a twitch to his heart, a little subdued.

Barnum hummed in confirmation to his question about him working on the railway and then frowns in thought.

“I think we built this stretch in 1824,” he says slowly, and Phillip is at first too surprised by his impressive memory to calculate how long ago 1824 actually was. He frowns to himself when the numbers finally slot into place in his head though, because either he has made a mistake somewhere in his calculation or Barnum is older than he looks. The confusion must show on his expression because Barnum smiles, amusement lighting up his expression lighting up once again.

“I wasn’t very old at the time, barely 13, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“Ah, I was more thinking that you look good for your age,” Phillip admits, regretting the words the moment they had left his lips. He feels his face flush with an embarrassment that Barnum doesn’t really help by laughing.

“I appreciate the compliment,” Barnum says, still chuckling, his usual teasing grin back on his lips.

Phillip waits for his laughter to die down, humiliation still glowing a in his cheeks but also a little relieved that at least Barnum’s mood seems to have brightened a little. He finds himself a little amused too; Barnum’s laughter is very much contagious, capable of setting much of the troupe off if he really finds something funny. It’s something about the open joy he allows to take over his expression, Phillip thinks, but he can’t really be sure.

“You were very young to be building railways, weren’t you?” he asks when the laughter has calmed to an end.

Barnum looks up from where he has been laughing at his hands in an attempt to calm himself.

“I was always a tall child, so I could handle the work.” He shrugs dismissively. “And there’s something about the promise of a roof over your head and three meals a day that’s almost too good to turn down when you haven’t eaten a hot meal in months.”

His tone is light as he says the words, as though having to work on the railways at thirteen to avoid starvation doesn’t bother him at all, and maybe it doesn’t, but Phillip can’t quite help the feeling that some of his almost blasé attitude is just an act. It’s only after that that he thinks back to the ‘roof over your head’ part of what Barnum had said.

“You used to be homeless?”

“Mmm hmm,” Barnum hums lightly, nodding, and Phillip can’t help the sympathetic look he gives the man. The look doesn’t go unnoticed, and the older man appears a little embarrassed and flashes him a smile in response.  

“It was only for a few months during the summer, nothing to get emotional over, Carlyle.”

Phillip rolls his eyes at the man’s words, he’s often teasing good-naturedly about his heart of a playwrite, but he can’t help the curiosity that grows at his words. Barnum’s father had been a skilled worker, he knows that much because Barnum had once told him when he had commented on the surprisingly neat repair he had seen him make on Lettie’s dress when she had torn the hem on a nail just before a show, so the family must have had some money, enough to keep a roof over their heads and feed their son at least.

He can’t help wondering if maybe Barnum had been the sort to run away from home. Phillip himself had considered running off a few times when he was younger, hating the stifling upper classes even when he was small, but it had taken years before the kind-hearted fraud sitting before him had finally given him the courage to do so, metaphorically, if not physically.

But Barnum would have been daring enough, certainly, he’s possibly one of the bravest people Phillip has ever met.

“Did you run away from home?”

“Oh, no.” Barnum gives a tiny huff of amusement, about what Phillip has no idea because after a second, he sighs, and a quiet sadness slips into the smile on his lips. “Both my parents were already dead.”

Phillip can’t help his shocked expression at his boss’s words, and despite what he has just said, Barnum looks to find it a maybe little amusing. Phillip doesn’t find it funny in the slightest.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he can manage to say, his heart almost breaking at the thought of the child the man before him had once been, orphaned and homeless and working on the railway before he had barely been old enough to leave school. He suddenly feels really quite guilty for hating his upbringing, because although it was lonely and stifling and miserable, at least he hadn’t been so entirely alone.

“It was a long time ago,” Barnum shrugs and gives a little forced smile and waves a hand dismissively. “Besides, it was never bad, working on the railway. Well, it was hard work, but they gave us a roof and food just as the promised. There was a sense of comradery too, if you pulled your weight you were one of the team.”

His gaze shifts away, not uncomfortably but instead to look out almost fondly out the window. His mind looks busy, as though he’s remembering the years he spent working in the middle of nowhere, getting paid to do a job many people twice his age would have been too scared to do. Phillip knew Barnum was brave, he had taken more risks in the few months Phillip had known him than anyone else he knew had in their lives, and he knew he had worked hard for his fortune, but it wasn’t until then that he really understood just what the man had been through to get himself to where he was.

“The money wasn’t bad, either, you know,” Barnum continues thoughtfully, eyes still fixed on the window. “And eventually I saved enough to buy Charity our first house.” A small smile grows on his lips at the mention of his wife, and for the first time since the conversation started, it looks entirely genuine. Phillip can’t help but smile a little too. “Of course, she would have wanted to married me even if I still had nothing, but I couldn’t have gone through with it, it wouldn’t be fair to her.”

Barnum looks a little pensive, fiddling almost subconsciously with his wedding ring, slowly twisting it round and round on his finger as he watches the countryside flash by the window. He’s thinking of his wife, Phillip is sure, and the daughters they had made together and likely brought up in the house he had brought with the money he earnt on the railway.

“I guess I actually owe quite a lot to these tracks,” he says sounding more like he is talking to himself than Phillip. “I’m not sure where I would be without them.”

A moment passes, silent but not uncomfortable. It’s Phillip that finally breaks it.

“You built the railway,” he says thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on Barnum as the train clicks over the tracks, “And in a way, the railway also built you.”

Barnum turns to look at him, his expression almost touched and a little bemused before his gaze returns fondly to the window, a small but genuine smile dancing on his lips.


	6. Fluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s so funny?” Phillip asked, a smile in his own tone at the sight of the almost hysterical man at the other desk. He craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was his partner was laughing at.
> 
> Phineas glanced up at the question, and Phillip’s heart gave a funny little swoop at the sight of his elated expression. His overly bright eyes were pinched in laughter, the little age lines beside them beautifully scrunched, and his lips were split wide in a grin so large Phillip was sure he could almost have swallowed his hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5, and fluff! I'm not a very fluffy writer, but here goes! Enjoy!
> 
> Also, I'm well aware that what Phineas is laughing at does not exist in the 1860's, but for amusement's sake, just roll with it :)

Phillip was working at his desk when Phineas started laughing. He looked up from his paperwork, much more interested in what was amusing his partner so than the taxes he was filing, and upon lifting his gaze was bemused to see the other man almost slumped over his own desk, his head propped up by a hand in his hair and his shoulders shaking uncontrollably with amusement. His hazel eyes were focused on his left hand, or more likely on what it was holding, Phillip realised, and bright with unshed tears.

“What’s so funny?” Phillip asked, a smile in his own tone at the sight of the almost hysterical man at the other desk. He craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was his partner was laughing at.

Phineas glanced up at the question, and Phillip’s heart gave a funny little swoop at the sight of his elated expression. His overly bright eyes were pinched in laughter, the little age lines beside them beautifully scrunched, and his lips were split wide in a grin so large Phillip was sure he could almost have swallowed his hat.

“It’s not even-” he started before his words were stolen and more chuckles erupted from his lips. Phillip watched him, one eyebrow raised, as the struggling man tried to get himself controlled enough to speak. “It’s not even funny!” The words were forced out between gaps, and then as soon as they were spoken, his composure was lost again and more laughter followed by an almost unnaturally high-pitched squeak of amusement left his lips.

Phillip’s eyebrows shot up at the sound and Phineas all but collapsed onto the desk, his head ending up pillowed on his elbow and his hand knocking at the wooden top as it tended to do when he was well and truly lost to his own amusement. The other hand was still holding whatever it was he was laughing entirely uncontrollably at, and Phillip, curiosity getting the better of him, pushed his chair back and went to investigate.

Phineas, it turned out, was holding a piece of semi molten chocolate. It was a segment of a half-eaten chocolate orange he had at some point stashed in the cluttered top draw of his desk. There was almost always had chocolate stored in his desk, he had a bit of a sweet tooth, as Phillip had discovered soon into their partnership, often sitting inocently beside the bottles of whisky he kept there for what he liked to call ‘business emergencies’.

But what was amusing him so about this particular piece of chocolate, Phillip had absolutely no idea. Phineas seemed to realise this too as he forced himself upright in his seat and held out the chocolate for inspection. His hand shook violently with amused tremors.

“Look,” he gasped, in between laughs, “What does it say on the side?”

Phillip took the semi-molten chocolate from him, frowning in bemusement, and read the writing engraved into the segment.

“It just says, outrageous, ?” he read, puzzled by the lack of anything funny about the word written on the chocolate.

Somehow though, that set Phineas off again and he snorted merrily and slumped back against the back of his seat, his eyes closed and a hand in his hair and his shoulders shaking.

“Have you been sneaking whisky when I’m not looking as well as chocolate,” Phillip quipped, a smile on his own lips at the sight of the 50-year-old man crying with laughter at a small piece of food. Phineas’ head rolled slowly from side to side as he shook in what Phillip assumed was meant to be a no.

“Do you think you can explain before I decide you’ve lost your final few marbles and cart you off to the hospital?”

Phineas grinned up at him at that but did try to steady himself a little.

“I thought it was a play on words,” he wheezed, his tone choked with supressed giggled, “a combination of orange and outrageous.”

Phillip frowned, confused, at scratched at his head.

“Ortrageous? Phin, that doesn’t even work,” he protested, entirely baffled, and then popped the sticky food into his mouth, sucking the remnants from his fingers. Phineas was too busy laughing to protest the theft of his favourite snack.

“I know! I thought it was a stupid pun of them to make, and then turns out they hadn’t even made it!”

There was a pause, Phineas giggling quietly to himself once again and Phillip trying to puzzle out what was amusing the brilliant mind of his partner.

“So, are you saying,” he started slowly, “you’re currently laughing at what, your own inability to read?”

Phineas broke down again at that, nodding as his whole body shook with his seemingly uncontainable laughter.

Phillip smiled at his hysterical partner and shook his head.  

“Your mind is a strange place, Phineas,” he sighed with fond exasperation and put his arms over his partner’s shoulders, hugging him from behind. Phineas leaned his head back onto his chest, beaming daftly up at him, his eyes still bright and damp with amusement and his shoulders still trembling uncontrollably as silent giggles wracked his body. Phillip pressed a kiss into his softly curing hair, still bemused and lost as to what his partner was finding quite so funny, but enjoying the sound and feel of his adorably unsuppressed amusement all the same.


	7. "Are you sure?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6 years, 773 letters, and Philo Barnum. 
> 
> These were what had passed between the day Charity Hallett had been ushered into a waiting carriage and taken from his life and the day Phineas Taylor Barnum got to see her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, oops, but better late than never!
> 
> Apologies for any mistakes, it's late, and I'm tired. Enjoy!

6 years, 773 letters, and Philo Barnum.

These were what had passed between the day Charity Hallett had been ushered into a waiting carriage and taken from his life and the day Phineas Taylor Barnum got to see her again.

They met on the beach, where they had met so many times before and on a day that was cold and damp and grey, the northerly wind chilling the air further and whipping the sea up into a frothy frenzy, sending the angry waves crashing onto the sand with force enough to steal pebbles to the ocean as it retreated.

And yet, to them the day was beautiful. Not because of the sea and the sand and the open sky, but because they were finally together again, holding each other in a way they had been unable to do so before, at first too young and then held apart by half a country, Charity trapped at finishing school and Phineas avoiding starvation by building the railways that were said to revolutionise the country.

But despite the distance between them, their relationship had blossomed, growing from a friendship between two lonely children to something much deeper and purer and loving through the ink and paper and words of the letters that darted back and forth between them. They had wanted more though, more than the words and thoughts and feelings the letters could provide, but between Charity’s long school terms and controlling father and Phineas’ gruelling work schedule, the letters were all they could have.

Until, six years later in the middle of a bitter March, their holidays aligned, Charity’s Easter break just happening to overlap with Phineas’ break in between building two different lines, and they found themselves together once again, older and wiser and no longer children but still very much _them_.

They had both stared at first, longing hearts pounding noisily but minds lost for words because what was there to say after six years apart; ‘hello’ couldn’t do such a reunion justice. And then, before Phineas was quite sure what was happening, his mind normally so cluttered and racing and brilliant stuttered to a stop by the young woman in front of him, she had thrown herself forwards, her arms around him and her head tilted up towards his.

And then, somehow, they were kissing, lips pressed softly together, teeth clinking against teeth, and arms tangled and caught between their bodies. It was a messy kiss, neither of them prepared or practiced and entirely unfamiliar with each other, but it was magical and breath taking, and Phineas found himself swaying dizzy, his head light with love or possibly lack of oxygen from the breaths he had forgotten in the moment.

And yet, it was Phineas that broke them apart, his hand gently sliding from Charity’s cheek where it had ended up to her shoulder, gently pushing her away. She didn’t resist, loosening her arms from around his shoulders and gazing up at him with confused eyes. 

“Phin-?” she had started, her voice soft and sweet and hurting at the rejection, only for other, deeper words to be spoken over her own.

“Are you certain this is what you want?” Phineas had demanded softly, his tone urgent and his eyes burning. She startled a little as he spoke, and he realised, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his voice was a good few octaves deeper than when she had last heard him. “You could have a much men than me. A man with money and status and the respect of your father, one who you wouldn’t have to give up your life to be with.” 

Charity’s expression crumbled from confusion to upset, her eyebrows furrowing into a frown.

“But neither money nor status nor my father’s opinion matter to me, Phineas,” she protested gently.  “They never have to me, you know that?”

“You _deserve_ someone better,” he almost whispered, eyes pained and expression heavy with emotion and his heart fought his head, love fighting the logic of tearing Charity from the world she grew up in.   

“But it’s you that I want. It’s you who I love. You showed me there is so much more to this world than manners and dresses and stifling social events. You showed me laughter and happiness and freedom and let me into the crazy world that lives inside your head. And more than anything, you showed me love, Phineas, and you let me experience it. I love you Phineas Taylor Barnum, more than anyone else in this world, and I am more than willing to give up the money and the status and my father’s approval to be with you.”

Phineas let out a pained noise half way between a groan and a sob. He looked upset, his eyes bright with unshed tears and Charity found her heart swelling for the tortured man before her.

“Are you sure?” he all but demanded, his tone desperate. “Are you sure that I’m worth all of that?”

“I’ve could be more sure of anything.” She reached up to his cheek, her knuckle gently skimming the weather worn skin so softly he could scarcely feel it, a tender smile playing on her lips.

Phineas exhaled shakily looking resigned and relieved and a little annoyed at himself and then lifted a hand to take hold of her one still barely resting on his cheek.

“If that’s what you want then I’ll come back for you,” he said, his deep tone determined, “When I can buy you a house I’ll come back, and then, if you still love me, we can be together. If this is really what you want, then I’ll make it work, I promise.”

Charity sighed softly at his earnest expression.

“I know you will, Phin, and until then, I’ll wait.” 

She kissed him again, and after a second, he kissed her back, his hands raising, one to her back and one to entwine in her soft blond hair. Their second kiss was smoother, lips working in sync, teeth not clattering, and more passionate, fuelled by emotion and longing and love. The dizziness came again, and the crashing of the waves dulled to background music and the bitter northerly wind was lost in the heat of the moment.

But then, as all kisses do, theirs too had to end, and Charity, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright had had to return to her Father’s house and finishing school and her upper class life and Phineas had returned to the railways, his heart brighter, and his hands now working for more than just a roof over his head.

8 more years, 1067 more letters, and three more meetings passed before Phineas Taylor Barnum returned to the house he had last been to 14 years before, a house of his own to his name and his promise to the woman he loved finally fulfilled.


	8. AU/Crossover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” Phillip stammered, interrupting again and almost as baffled by the strange behaviour of the man as he was of their sudden appearance in the lions’ cage. “But who are you?” 
> 
> “I’m Dirk Gently, from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and this-” he flung a hand out to indicate the other man “-is Todd, my assis-friend."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency crossover! but you don't need to have seen it for this to make sense, or as much sense as it is it meant to make anyway. 
> 
> Just a little background - Dirk is self made, slightly psychic detective and Todd is his reluctant assistant, and together they stumble blindly, lead by Dirk's hints from the universe, solving bizarre and nonsensical cases along the way. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Phillip had been with the elephants when he had heard the screams. They were loud and high and utterly terrified and, worryingly, originating from the direction of the lions’ pen.

He had startled at the sound, fear and confusion surging in his mind and his heart thrumming in his throat. A moment had passed, his thoughts racing, and then, when he had finally remembered how to move, he had dropped the bucket of peanuts he had been holding and sprinted towards the screaming.

Phillip entered the den just in time to see two men stumbling through the barred door of the lions’ cage. One was tall and gangly, wearing an off-white shirt with an ice-cream-cone-patterned tie and a jacket made entirely of bright yellow leather, and tripped out the exit. He landed sprawled on the floor with an exaggerated ‘oof’, the metal box he was carrying hitting the ground beside him with a rattling clang. The other man was shorter, with darker, messier hair and was wearing a blue jacket made from a fabric Phillip hadn’t seen before and a black collarless shirt with the words “Mexican Funeral” emblazoned on the front. Thankfully he stayed upright and skittishly slammed the metal door closed behind them, successfully trapping the rather intrigued lions inside their home.

Phillip breathed a sigh of relief at both the apparent safety of the two men and the continued entrapment of the lions themselves. The lions were tame enough, they were trained for the show after all, but Phillip still didn’t really like to deal with them and especially not on his own. There was something about a carnivorous animal with a jaw large enough to swallow his head that didn’t sit quite right with him no matter how many times he was told they were friendly.

“What the Hell, Dirk?!” the shorter man shouted shrilly to the taller one, stumbling away from the cage with a look of uncontainable panic plastered all over his face.

The taller man, Dirk, Phillip assumed, if that was even a name, climbed to his feet, looking shaken but, confusingly, rather excited.

“Look, Todd, _lions_!” he exclaimed in a surprisingly British accent, staring at the cage they had just escaped from, his eyes wide and marvelling at the creatures trapped inside. “Real live lions, circus lions in fact, I think, certainly performing lions anyway-”

“I know about the lions!” the shorter man interrupted, his tone irate, and his hands raised in the air in frustration. “They very nearly had us for breakfast after you landed us in their cage!”

Dirk glanced away from the cage, shooting a hurt glare towards the other man.

“That clearly wasn’t where I was aiming for, was it, Todd!” he muttered, sounding a little put out. His previously overjoyed expression had fallen and his eyebrows furrowed, leaving him looking a little confused by the other man’s anger. Phillip, on the other hand, entirely understood why he was upset, but what he didn’t understand was what the two men were doing in with the lions in the first place.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted, finally finding his tongue. “What on earth are you doing in here?”

The two men turned to look at him, seeming to finally realise they were not alone in the room and the yellow jacketed man’s expression lit up, his misery at being scolded only moments ago apparently forgotten.

“Look, the ringleader!” he exclaimed, his tone elevated and looking as though he was almost about to burst with excitement. “He’s got the red coat and a top hat and everything!”

The man beside him, Todd, it seemed, raised a hand to his head, looking exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip stammered, interrupting again and almost as baffled by the strange behaviour of the man as he was of their sudden appearance in the lions’ cage. “But who are you?”

“I’m Dirk Gently, from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and this-” he flung a hand out to indicate the other man “-is Todd, my assis-friend. And who are you?”

“I’m Phillip,” he answered out of habit more than anything else, “but…” he broke off, looking between the two men, “I don’t understand, what…why are you here?”

“We’re from the future-” Todd started to explain, sounding almost as fed up as Phillip was starting to feel, only to be interrupted by his overly excited British friend.

“This box,” he bent down to scoop the metal contraption he had been carrying from the floor, “is a time machine.”

“That Dirk doesn’t know how to operate.” The words were mumbled under Todd’s breath and earnt him a glare and a sigh from his friend.

“Look, Todd, if you think you can fly it better than you’re more than welcome to try.” He offered the box over, but Todd raised an eyebrow and shook his head, his expression somewhere between amused and annoyed.

“Nope, you got us into this mess, you fix it. I told you using the time machine like this was a stupid idea.”

Dirk huffed but then sat himself down on the floor to fiddle with the dials and leavers on what was apparently his time machine. Phillip watched him, all sensible thoughts gone from his brain.

“That… travels… through time?” he asked instead, realising how ridiculous his question was as soon as it had left his lips. The two men before him, however, took said question as though they had been asked to confirm that the sky was blue.

“Well, yep, it’s a time machine,” confirmed Todd, as Dirk ‘mm-hmm’ed distractedly. “A bit of a shit one though, we’ve been jumping around for hours trying to get back home. Although, I’m not sure if the problem is actually just the pilot, the man we stole it from seemed to be using it okay.”

“Borrowed,” Dirk corrected lightly from the floor, earning himself another eye roll.

“Anyway, the point is we used to time machine to return the crown jewels to the Tower of London just in time to resolve that whole situation with the Queen and that strange green man who said he was from Paris-”

“We solved the case!” Dirk interrupted, grinning proudly down at his time machine.

“-but since then we’ve been jumping around different time and places trying to get home because _someone_ can’t work the time machine he insisted on stealing! I think this is the 17th place we’ve been to-”

“15th, actually-”

“-and it’s really beginning to get ridiculous now.”

“When is home?” Phillip found himself asking, trying to make any sort of sense of the nonsense the two men before him were spouting.

 “2019.”

Phillip felt his eyebrows make a leap towards his hairline and then realising the complete ridiculousness of the situation, shook his head. There was no way in hell that what the men were saying was true.

“Did PT put you up to this?” he asked, looking between the two men and the lion cage he had found them escaping from. “This is exactly the type of crazy hoax he’d pull.”

Todd scoffed, looking incredulous, and his mouth had already opened, a protest on his lips when he was interrupted by Dirk whose head had jerked up so violently from the lever he was playing with that Phillip was surprised he hadn’t given himself whiplash.

“Wait, what year is it?” he asked, his hands paused on the metal box.

“Erm, 1872?”

Dirk groaned in realisation, and then looked down to fiddle with the dials on his box once again, and then, with a triumphant ‘aha!’ picked it up and climbed to his feet. He turned to Todd once he was up, his grin wide. “Okay, I’m pretty sure I’ve set it right this time.”

“You said that the past three times.”

“Yes, but I’m _really_ pretty sure this time, like 120%. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“I’m not even going to answer that.” Todd scoffed, eyebrows arched, but then sighed and took hold of one of the handles on the contraption in his friend’s arms.

Dirk gave him a cheery grin and then glanced up at Phillip, his expression suddenly thoughtful.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw us, okay?” he insisted, his tone serious. “You never know what impact it could have on the future if you do.”

Phillip frowned alarmed, but Todd snorted, one eyebrow raised.

“It’s not like anyone would believe him if he did, is it?”

“That’s beside the point, Todd,” the British man tutted, sending a glare his way. “Anyway, it was very nice to meet you, Mr Phillip, but we’ll be going now. Goodbye!”

And then, before Phillip had time to even consider what the men were saying, Dirk had pressed a button on his box, and with a whirring sound and a flash of blue light, both the two men and the box had vanished.

Phillip blinked at the spot where they had been only moments before, his breath held, still not quite believing the crazy situation he had just witness unfold. He stood there, and the seconds ticked by and then, when he was almost certain nothing more would happen, turned and shakily headed back towards their office where Barnum was likely waiting for him.

The two men, in all their irrational, unbelievable nonsense, had certainly been right about one thing though; even Phineas Taylor Barnum, King of Humbug who loved a little crazy, was not going to believe a word of any of it.


	9. Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so, when the snow had fallen and settled and Phillip had grimaced, Phineas’ had been thrilled, which was why, perhaps, it was so amusing that out of the pair of them it had been Phineas that slipped over on the ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late but oh well! Apologies in advance for any mistakes. Enjoy!

Phillip didn’t hate the snow. He thought it looked pretty when it was falling, and he admired the beauty of it when it covered previously green landscape like gentle frosting on a cake, and he found it amusing to watch others play in it, rolling snowman and throwing snowballs and sledging on the hills. But what Phillip didn’t really like about the snow, was being in it. It was cold, for a start, and wet once it melted, and when it grew old it left the city covered in a grey, damp slush that splashed onto his shoes and stained the hems of his trousers.

Phineas, on the other hand loved the snow. He was a child at heart, Phillip knew, and he grew excited even as the first few flakes started falling from the sky at the prospect of it laying. Part of it, Phillip knew, was that Caroline and Helen loved the snow, and anything that they enjoyed, was automatically something Phineas enjoyed, even if that enjoyment only came from watching their expressions light up in delight.

And so, when the snow had fallen and _settled_ and Phillip had grimaced, Phineas’ had been thrilled, which was why, perhaps, it had been so amusing that out of the pair of them it was Phineas that slipped over on the ice.

He had fallen almost in slow motion, expression startled and eyes wide in alarm, arms pinwheeling in a desperate attempt to regain his footing but his balance entirely gone. He had hit the ground hard, how else would a 6-foot-2 muscular man fall, landing flat on his back in a heap amongst the snowflakes. Snow fluffed out from under him, surrounding him in a tiny, personal flurry, before settling down again, covering his vibrant coat and dark, wavy hair in tiny, white crystals.

Phillip couldn’t help the bubble of amusement that had escaped his lips, much more at how his partner had fallen and the irony that he had been the one to fall at all than the fall itself. But then, heart catching up with his sense of humour, he had sobered his amusement and schooled his expression into one of forced sincerity.

“Are you alright?” he asked lightly, a badly supressed smirk still playing on his lips.

Phineas sat up slowly, looking more than a little startled and with his eyebrows furrowed in a frown, and lifted a hand to rub at the back of his bear head, the fingers vanishing into his waves. He had lost his hat in his fall, Phillip realised, it having fallen from his head when he toppled and rolled a little away on the icy path. At least Phineas himself had landed in the mounded snow lining the path rather than on the ice itself.

“A hand up would be nice,” Phineas responded, sounding a little irritated, the question he had been asked going unanswered. Phillip wasn’t quite sure if he was annoyed at himself for slipping and making a bit of a fool out of himself, as his slightly skewed opinion would certainly see it, or at Phillip for laughing. Phillip frowned too, concerned by the request because the Phineas Taylor Barnum he knew would never ask for help unless he was in dire need.

“You aren’t hurt, are you?” he asked worriedly as he obligingly stuck out a hand to help his fallen partner to his feet.

Phineas shook his head as he took the offered hand. “No, only my ego is bruised,” he replied casually, and then, with a sudden, wide smirk, he pulled on Phillip’s arm, not so as to raise himself from the floor, but instead in such a way to bring the other man down on top of him.

Phillip yelped as he fell and then let out a winded ‘oof’ as he landed on his grinning partner. He was only on top of Phineas for a second before he had been pushed off and rolled onto his back, Phineas rotating too to pin him down in the snow, his expression elated.

“Hey, Phin, no!” Phillip protested, shuddering as the snow slid down the neck of his coat, melting against his skin and soaking into the collar of his shirt and struggled against the man pinning on the chilly but surprisingly comfortable heap he was laying on, a grin he couldn’t help growing on his own lips. “It’s cold!”

“Ah, the cold’s part of the fun!” was the scoffed reply he got, but after a second, Phineas did loosen his hands from his wrists and sat back, allowing him to push himself up a little too and throw the handful of snow his fingers had closed around into the startled face of his partner.   

Phineas exclaimed at the attack and leapt forwards to pin him once again, but Phillip, expecting it, was already rolling to the side, tumbling off the heap of snow they had landed on and pulling a startled Phineas with him.

They landed on more snow, there was little else to land on, but this time Phillip got himself the upper hand, ending up sitting on Phineas’ thighs, his hands tightly around his wrists and pinning them beside his head. Phillip let out a breathless ‘aha’ of victory and raised his eyebrows at the man stuck beneath him.

Phineas, despite being held down on the snow, was positively beaming. His eyes were wide and bright with excitement and his cheeks rosy from the cold and his hair was mussed wildly and white where clumps of snow had caught in his curls. Still held to the ground, he craned his neck, leaning up towards the man leaning over him until he was close enough that Phillip could see the individual tiny flakes caught in his eyelashes from the crude snowball he had thrown.

And then, quite unexpectedly, he placed quick, pecked kiss on the end of Phillip’s chilly nose.

Phillip blinked at the kiss, almost as startled as he had been by being pulled into the snow in the first place, but then found himself leaning down for another, his lips meeting those of his partner. The kiss was cold and messy, the angle wrong so that their noses knocked, and their teeth clattered, but surprisingly tender, until caught off guard with his eyes closed, Phillip found himself moving, the man beneath him using the distraction to free himself and gain the upper hand.

“That was rude!” Phillip exclaimed indignantly, as he was rolled onto his back and Phineas laughed, his grin mischievous and eyes glinting.

“When do I ever play fair?” he breathed, one eyebrow raised but then, after a moment, he lessened his weight a little and allowed Phillip the chance to gain the upper hand again.

Phillip took it, a wild grin on his own lips, and almost pounced at his partner and then, in the snow they rolled and wrestled, snowflakes flying around them both from their flurried movements and thrown from their hands, neither man really gaining an advantage against the other despite Phineas very clearly having been able to had he desired. The snow was cold, but Phillip found he no longer cared, too caught up in their battle to even notice as it caught in his cuffs and melted, leaving them damp and sticking to his skin.

Minutes passed before they came to a halt in a dip between two mounds, both damp and snow-covered, their cheeks rosy and their eyes bright as they lay together in the snow. They were both on their backs, their heads resting inches apart, and then a hand, large and rough from years of work, found its way into Phillip’s. He grasped it tightly, feeling its tremors, from cold of excitement he couldn’t tell, and lifted his head to look at his partner.

Phineas’ expression was elated, his eyes bright and wide and his smile large enough to gently wrinkle the delicate skin beside them. Phillip realised, despite the cold, he was likely was pulling a very similar expression, just perhaps with smoother skin around his eyes. Phineas looked over at him and caught his eye, and then, before he could really understand what had just happened, they were both laughing breathlessly, Phillip chuckling quietly and Phineas’ deep and honest and openly delighted, and Phillip, chest spasming uncontrollably in amusement, realised that maybe, just maybe, snow wasn’t quite so bad after all.


	10. "Take me home?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Take me home?” he slurred into his partner, and Phineas, with a last kiss to his hair and a whispered ‘okay’ loosened his hold and helped him stumble down from the bar stool, keeping an arm around his waist to steady him when he staggered, his balance dubious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, on time! Well, only just! 
> 
> Apologies for any typos or forgotten keyboard mushes! 
> 
> I think this is a bit of a garbled mess but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Phineas found Phillip in the pub. He was alone, sat at the dimly lit bar of the otherwise abandoned establishment, his jacket gone and waistcoat unbuttoned and bow tie hanging loose around his neck. He looked surprisingly similar to how he had the night they had met, the night Phillip had joined the circus, the only difference being his expression, then intrigued and openly bemused and slightly tipsy, but now haunted and pained instead.

The large glass of whisky he was holding in his trembling hand was different too, Phineas realised with a heavy heart, this one poured out of upset and a determination to forget rather than for a sociable drink with a man he had just met. The bottle sat beside him was a little more than half empty, and he hoped it hadn’t been unopened when Phillip had started. He was unhealthily used to alcohol, had a tolerance built up in his early adulthood that hadn’t faded all that much in his years since, but what was missing was still a lot even for him to have drunk.

“It wasn’t a good evening, I take it,” Phineas said as he closed the door behind him, shutting the chill of the night outside. The room dimmed further once the door was closed, the light from the streetlights blocked outside, leaving them in the glim light of the one lantern Phillip had bothered to light, now abandoned on the back counter of the bar beside the lines of bottles. Phineas wondered if he had only lit it to assist in his search for the whisky.

Phillip glanced round at his words, his expression resigned and lost and hurt and his eyes bright with something more than alcohol.

“Fuck off, Phineas,” he muttered, his words heavy with alcohol but with little force before turning back to his drink and taking a gulp.

Phineas raised an eyebrow at his uncharacteristically crude language but then sighed and made his way to the bar, unbuttoning his coat and leaving it along with his scarf and hat on an abandoned table as he passed.

He sat down on the stool beside his partner, and then, after a moment, reached over the bar and took a glass, inspecting it in the dim light before taking the bottle and pouring himself a finger of the amber liquid. The bottle ended up sitting on his other side, and Phillip wasn’t quite sure if it was simply a result of his left-handed pouring or the drink had been deliberately confiscated. He swallowed the rest of his whisky defiantly, relinquishing in the burn it ignited in his throat as it passed, and then reached past his partner for the bottle.

“Phil,” Phineas sighed gently, catching hold of his hand and giving it a light squeeze, “you’ve been doing so well.”

Phillip glared, expression suddenly furious and snatched his hand away but at least didn’t reach for the whisky again, the fingers curling into a fist on the wooden top of the bar instead.

“Have you come to judge me too?” he demanded, his eyes leaving to stare angrily at the empty glass before him.

Phineas frowned at his reaction, his eyebrows furrowing in concern.

“You know full well I haven’t.” His voice was soft and steady despite the harsh words of his partner, but still left no room for doubt about what he’d said.

“Then why are you here?” Phillip snapped, his tone still hard despite the slur that was creeping into it as the whisky took effect. Phineas sighed and reached out to take his hand again. This time, Phillip didn’t shake him off, but he didn’t make any move to return the gesture either.

“I’m sure you know the answer to that one too. Where would you be if I looked as upset as you did when you ran off other than beside me?”

Phillip glanced up again at that, and catching a glimpse of his partner’s tormented expression, his anger deflated as quickly as it had come leaving upset in its wake.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked, and then let out a bitter, humourless laugh. “Did you just head to the building with the most whisky?”

Phineas’ frown deepened and he sighed disapprovingly at the self-depreciating joke. 

“I assumed you’d gone home at first, actually,” he corrected. “But when I got there and found the door locked, I realised my keys had gone from my coat. This is the only place I have a key to that you don’t, so it wasn’t a hard leap from there.”

“Oh,” was all Phillip could think of saying, and then he took the offending keys from his pocket and handed them back to their owner. Their eyes caught, intoxicated blue holding concerned hazel.

Phineas thanked him quietly, pocketing them, and then sighed and turned to face his partner. “So, what happened?”

Phillip’s gaze returned to the empty glass in front of him. He regretted draining it all earlier and then, somewhere at the back of his mind, he realised Phineas hadn’t actually taken a sip of the drink he had poured himself when he had taken the bottle. He wondered if he ever had intended to.

“Nothing happened,” he mumbled, tone closed, still avoiding his partner’s concerned gaze.

“Something must have happened,” Phineas countered softly, glancing purposefully at the bottle still sat beside him on the bar.

There was a pause before Phillip spoke.

 “My parents were there,” he explained, his tone heavy, and Phineas’ expression morphed into a confused frown. Phillip and his parents had always had a distant relationship, especially after he ran away to join the circus, and then even more so after they had found out about his brief and mutually ended relationship with Anne. They were still on reasonable terms though, and spoke civilly when out in public, especially at a high end gala such as the one they had been at that evening, even if they didn’t have much to do with each other in private.

“Yes, I saw?” Phineas’ words were lilted like a question and he tilted his head, waiting for Phillip to say more.

Phillip sighed and ran a hand roughly through his hair and then, after a moment, looked up at his partner though troubled, unfocused eyes. The glinted wetly in the yellow light of the single lantern.

“They found out about us, Phin,” he all but whispered, and then before Phineas could even think of what to reply, his expression had crumpled, angry tears leaking from his closed eyes. He turned away, rubbing and them furiously, and Phineas, his heart aching, jumped down from the bar stool and wrapped his arms around him. Phillip resisted at first, his posture stiff but then he seemed to relent and leaned into the embrace, his forehead ending up rested on his shoulder, his hair tickling his neck.

Phineas shushed him as he sobbed, one hand rubbing comforting circles on his shoulder blades as the anger and upset leaking from him, loosened by alcohol and his partner’s concerned presence, and soaked into the dark fabric of his waistcoat.

“Oh, Phillip,” he breathed, his tone upset too. “You know you shouldn’t listen to a word they say.” The words were soft and gently scolding, and although Phineas didn’t actually know what had happened when their previously concealed relationship had been revealed, judging by his partner’s reaction, it couldn’t have been very nice. Phillip’s parent’s, whilst not exactly abusive, had never had many positive words to say to their son, and despite Phillip mostly knowing they were just judgemental swells who had too much time to worry about how others perceived everything their only son was doing, sometimes, Phineas knew, some of what they said got to him.

“But what if they’re right,” Phillip stammered in between sobs, his tone choked and slurred and messy. Phineas hugged him tighter, a hand reaching up to cup his head.

“I don’t know what they said, but I know there isn’t a change in hell that anything they said was true.”

Phillip drew in a shuddering breath.

“They said they’d rather have never had a son than have a disgusting disappointment like me,” he stuttered in between sobs and gasps for breath, the words tumbling from his lips into the cotton waistcoat they were pressed to. He paused and drew in a shuddering, soggy breath, and then so quietly Phineas struggled to hear what he had said, uttered “They said I was a waste of a life.”

Phineas’ heart clenched painfully in his chest at his partner’s words.

“Phillip, listen to me,” he groaned, unwrapping his arms and pushing the man he was holding away a little so that that their eyes caught for a moment before Phillip’s dropped to his lap. “Don’t you ever think that, do you hear me, don’t you ever think that you are worth so little.”

“But my parents-”

“Your parent are horrible people, Phillip, and you might not be worth much to them, but that doesn’t mean what they think is true. You are worth so much to so many people, to me and the girls and charity and Lettie and Anne and everyone else at the circus. You are an amazing person, Phillip, you’re the most loving, kind, selfless person I know.

“It was you that held down the circus even though you were terrified and completely out of your depth, and it was you that was there to pick me up afterwards when I had not only ruined my own life but those of everyone around me, and you risked your savings to restart the circus and give everyone back their home and their job. Hell, it was you that ran into a burning building in search of someone you didn’t know was in there, and if that doesn’t make you worthy of life, I don’t know what does.”

“You are an amazing human being, Phillip Carlyle, so never, never think you are not worth a human life, because you are worth so much more than that.”

There was a pause and then Phillip swallowed audibly and raised his head.

“Thank you, Phin,” he mumbled wetly, looking up at him with watery eyes. “You’re a pretty good person too, you know.”

Phineas scoffed lightly but didn’t protest, and then drew the still crying man back to him, holding him tightly. Phillip’s arms wrapped around him too this time, and he pressed a kiss onto his forehead, the styled hair brushing stiffly against his nose. They ended up swaying so slowly it was scarcely noticeable as Phillip’s remaining sobs slowly fizzled out, leaving him shaking and gasping and sniffling but at least hurting a little less.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was Phillip who broke the moment.

“Ohh, Phineas,” he groaned, the words muffled by the cloth they were spoken in to. “I drank so much.” He sounded miserable and lost, but his voice at least had lost its teary edge a little. The rocking stilled, and then Phineas sighed and looked down to catch his partner’s regretful and tipsily sloppy expression. His posture was a mess too, slumped with a mixture of alcohol and exhaustion, and his balance on his bar stool questionable.

“You have, much too much, but that’s okay because I know you’re sorry for doing it,” he comforted softly, “Besides, you’ve had an awful evening, I don’t blame you in the slightest.”

There was a pause and then Phillip sighed.  

“I love you, Phin.” The words were slurred and low, but said with feeling and Phineas smiled sadly and pressed a kiss into his partner’s hair.

“I love you too, Phillip, so much.”

“I know,” Phillip said thickly, and then sighed against his shoulder. It was shuddering and wet but so much calmer than the ragged breathing that he had before been gasping between sobs.

“Take me home?” he slurred into his partner, and Phineas, with a last kiss to his hair and a whispered ‘okay’ loosened his hold and helped him stumble down from the bar stool, keeping an arm around his waist to steady him when he staggered, his balance dubious.

Phillip sniffled, rubbing the leftover tears from his eyes with shaky, slightly uncoordinated hands.

“I’ve ruined your waistcoat,” he muttered wetly, and Phineas craned his neck to look at the damp, salt stained patch on his shoulder and sighed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said as he took one of Phillip’s arms and drew it over his shoulder, his other arm snaking supportively around his waist. “Your wellbeing is more important that any item of clothing I own or ever could.”

“Even your ringmasters coat?”

Phineas chuckled lightly, glancing sideways to catch the eye of his partner.

“Oh, no, Phillip,” he said, sounding aghast, an impish grin on his lips and a teasing glint in his eyes. “You know I wouldn’t quite go that far.”

And Phillip, despite himself, chuckled too and leaned into his partner’s shoulder, still hurting and exhausted from emotions and really quite intoxicated, but relieved because although his parents no longer wanted him in their lives, Phineas did, and for him, that was more than enough.


	11. Facing your fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barnum was laying on the carpet, stretched out on his back between the desks and surrounded by the paper he insisted on filing on the floor. His knees were bent up towards the ceiling and his hands caught in his hair and he was still dressed in his ringleader’s coat, the tails haphazardly caught beneath him. 
> 
> “Don’t laugh,” he said, his tone resigned and his expression to match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10! Not sure this really fulfils the prompt, it didn't quite turn out as I had expected. Contains a little angst, a little sort of light hearted whump, and Phineas stuck on the floor like an upturned tortoise.
> 
> Enjoy!

Phillip could pinpoint the exact moment in the show when it had happened. It was during their rendition of ‘come alive’ at the point where Barnum slid across the sand on his knees as the acrobat somersaulted over his head. He had dropped to the floor, but then as he had leant back to slide, his expression had crumpled minutely, his eyes tightening in pain, and the note he was singing gasped to a sudden close.

He recovered quickly enough, smoothing his expression and continuing his song and finishing his slide before anyone else likely noticed.

Phillip _had_ noticed though, and he noticed the slight stumble the ringleader gave as he climbed to his feet and the tight lines of pain that never quite left his eyes and the unnaturally stiff way he carried himself for the rest of the song. He noticed the way he actually leaned on his showman’s cane once they had returned backstage, too, his grasp on the handle so tight his knuckles whitened and strained.   

Barnum excused himself sooner than he normally would too, leaving Phillip to coordinate the final few acts of that half of the show, and took himself, posture hunched, off in the direction of their shared office. Phillip watched him go, a little concerned, and then returned to his back-up-ringleader duties.

Afterwards, once the final act of that half had begun, he followed the still absent man to their office. He opened the door and then stopped, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

Barnum was laying on the carpet, stretched out on his back between the desks and surrounded by the paper he insisted on filing on the floor. His knees were bent up towards the ceiling and his hands caught in his hair and he was still dressed in his ringleader’s coat, the tails haphazardly caught beneath him. He looked over at the sound of the door opening, his head only just rising from the carpet, and then rolled his eyes back up towards the ceiling when he saw who had entered.

“Don’t laugh,” he said, his tone resigned and his expression to match. At least the tightness that had surrounded his eyes before has faded a little, Phillip thought as he frowned, confused at both the sight of his partner laying on the floor and at the words he had spoken.

“What… Why would I laugh?” He crossed the room to stand beside Barnum’ feet. It felt a little odd to be looking down on the man who normally towered almost imposingly over him. The man on the floor averted his eyes, looking suddenly embarrassed.

“Because I’m stuck,” he admitted, after a moment, and Phillip felt his eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline.

“You’re stuck? On the floor?”

Barnum hummed in confirmation, squirming a little under Phillips surprised scrutiny.

“Think I pulled a muscle I my back,” he explained, his tone light despite his predicament. “So, I laid down to stretch, which turned out to be a poor idea as I now can’t get up again.”

Phillip supressed a smirk.

“Is the infallible Phineas Taylor Barnum asking for help?” He couldn’t help the amusement that crept into his tone and Barnum rolled his eyes, pouting a little.

“I told you not to laugh.” He glared good-naturedly and then sighed and reached up towards him. “A hand please, Phillip.”

Phillip sighed dramatically but took the hand and pulled, trying to help the larger man to his feet. His shoulders got barely half a foot from the floor before a low, pained cry left his lips and Phillip, startled, let go.

Barnum fell down again, his eyes scrunched tightly in pain and his breathing held as he rode out the wave. One of his hands was fisted tightly in his dark, wavy hair the other scrabbling against the hard carpet.

The smirk fell from Phillip’s lips, the amusement of the situation evaporated in an instant, and a frown took its place at the sight of the normally so confident and larger than life ringleader hurting and unable to rise from the floor. Worry squirmed uncomfortably in his gut.

“Are you sure you’ve just pulled a muscle?” he asked, concern heavy in his tone and eyebrows furrowed, when the tight hazel eyes opened again. Barnum sighed and rolled his eyes to look at him. He seemed reluctant to even move his head to look round now.  

“Well, maybe a few muscles,” he admitted, voice as tight as his expression. “But I haven’t damaged anything seriously, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

Phillip nodded slowly, not really sure whether to believe the man or not. He was well known for bending the truth to suit himself, especially when his own health came into play; PT Barnum was not a man to admit his own failings unless he needed to. Phillip was sure the only reason he was still on the floor was because his abused muscles were physically incapable of allowing him to rise. 

“Maybe we should try to go little slower, next time,” he suggested tentatively, not actually sure it would help the poor man but knowing leaving him on the floor of the office until his muscles recovered wasn’t an option either.

“I think you could be right,” Barnum agreed, looking annoyed at his own body’s failings.

“Do you want to try again?”

The grounded man paused and then reluctantly shook his head. “I think I need a minute first,” he admitted, looking like the words were hurting more than the pulled muscles in his back. Then he frowned questioningly up at Phillip. “How long until the interval ends?”

Phillip frowned too, and then his eyes widened in realisation.

“You’re not thinking of finishing the show, are you?!”

“Of course.” The words were sure and simple, as if he had just been asked to confirm his own name. Phillip’s expression fell into disbelief.

“PT, if your back is injured enough that you’re unable to rise from the floor you’re not going to be able to perform.”

“I’ll be okay once I’m up.” He waved a hand dismissively, but the bravado was very much stolen by his supine position.

Phillip scoffed at the remark, knowing there was no chance of the man before him being ‘okay once he was up’.

“You’re insane, you know.”

“I’m just committed,” Barnum countered, and Phillip sighed at his partner’s idiocy and ran a hand through his stiff hair. A moment passed, and then an idea struck and a slight grin took over his expression. 

“Okay, here’s a deal; if you can get yourself off this floor under your own power, then you can perform, if not, then I’ll take over. Agreed?”

The poor man looked a little lost of what to say to that, unable to agree but also unable to find a valid point to argue. Phillip raised an eyebrow pointedly, and Barnum looked away, expression irritated.

“So, you have two choices,” he continued, “Either you can agree to let me finish the show in your stead and I can help you up so you can go home and rest, or you can protest and demand to finish the show yourself, resulting in me leaving you stuck here like an upturned tortoise whilst I finish the show anyway. It’s up to you, PT, but I think I know what option I would choose if it were me.”  

There was a pregnant pause, and then,“Fine,” Barnum huffed, his expression annoyed and defeated. “You finish the show.”

“Thank you,” Phillip nodded, and then, after a pause, moved to sit cross legged on the floor beside him. “Why was it such a struggle for you to agree to?” he asked rhetorically, sighing in semi-mock frustration.

Barnum laughed, apparently amused by his partner’s annoyance at his stubborn antics, before his chuckle was abruptly cut off into a hiss as his back jarred. His features tightened briefly, pain flashing across his face before he managed to school his expression back to one of vague amusement. Phillip sighed, sadly this time. 

“You don’t always have to pretend to be okay when you’re hurting, you know?”

Barnum frowned at the question, caught off guard by his suddenly soft tone.

“People rely on me to be okay,” he admitted quietly after a second with uncharacteristic honesty. “Or, maybe they did, I guess they don’t so much anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Barnum glanced away, gazing up at the ceiling once again. He looked to regret what he had said.

“I don’t come from much, you know,” he started eventually, and Phillip’s eyebrows drew together a little at the seemingly out of place statement. “And I tried to convince Charity that she could find someone better than me, someone with money and status and the respect of her father, but she’s almost as stubborn as me when she wants to be, and we ended up married. I promised her a life as grand as the one she had been born into, but life doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to.

“I struggled to hold down jobs, unsuited to most of them, but unlucky sometimes too, and the businesses I started either flopped instantly or only lasted for a few months. We struggled with money, and although most of the time we could just about manage, there where times when it was really, really tight, and so when I was working it was something I could never take for granted.”

“And so, you’d work, even when you shouldn’t have been, because your family counted on you?” Phillip half stated, half questioned as he read between the lines of what had been said.

Barnum nodded grimly and then swallowed. 

“There was a time,” he said slowly, his eyes troubled and distant, “Just after Caroline was born, when I broke my wrist. It wasn’t bad; it healed perfectly, but I couldn’t work after it happened, they wouldn’t let me. The months before had been hard, and we were already behind on the rent, and for those couple of weeks we were so, so close to losing the apartment.

“I went back to work as soon the bruising had faded enough for them think it was healed, and it bloody hurt, but at least my wife and new-born daughter didn’t end up homeless.”

“You don’t have to do that anymore though,” Phillip told him softly, and Barnum hummed doubtfully before continuing.

“The circus solved it all for a while, the money was no longer a worry, and then, well, you know what happened, and we were sort of back to square one. It wasn’t quite as bad that time, at least Charity and Caroline and Helen had somewhere to stay, but it was also worse because it was entirely my own fault and I had so many more people to make it up to.”

“But you don’t need to make it up to them anymore, you’ve more than done it.”

“I know, I know,” Barnum sighed, his expression conflicted. “It’s just… Oh, I don’t know.” He broke off again, not seeming to know quite what he wanted to say or if he even wanted to say it. Phillip looked at him, reading his expression, and then, when he spoke, his voice was soft.

“Showing weakness isn’t a bad thing, you know.”

Barnum squirmed a little uncomfortably, looking like he was more than ready for a change in topic and Phillip realised he might have hit a nail on the head there. 

“Help me up,” he requested suddenly, breaking the conversation. “Between your unusually towering height and bombardment of questions I’m starting to feel a little exposed.”

Phillip chucked lightly, and then bent forwards and gently helped guide the injured man upright. The movement, as slow and careful as it was, still hurt and although Barnum stayed silent this time, his expression still tightened and his skin paled a tone. He swore under his breath once he was sat, provoking a tense smile from his partner.

“Maybe you’re right and I am getting old,” he gasped, a teasing glint in his eye and Phillip rolled his eyes. 

The music of the show started up again, starting them both, evoking a cheer from the crowd and another curse from Barnum.

“Help me up, you need to go,” he said, pushing at the floor in an attempt to stand. His expression paled further and his top teeth dug into the soft skin of his lips. Phillip put a stilling hand on his shoulders.

“Take your time, Lettie and WD can run things for now, I just need to leave with time to fetch my hat before the finale.”

Barnum, surprisingly, stilled, looking both pained and relieved and then leant back, supporting himself on his arms.

“So, what did you actually do?” Phillip asked curiously once Barnum seemed to have recovered a little. “I saw your knee slide, but…” he trailed off, not really sure how the athletic man could hurt his back by doing what he did every other night without fail. Maybe his age really was starting to catch up with him, he was nearing 50 after all.

“Oh, well, I was swinging the girls around last night, you know how they enjoy it,” he explained, looking a little embarrassed. “but they’re both getting a little bigger than they used to be, and well, I guess I’m getting older.” He shrugged and then looked to regret it a little, arching his spine uncomfortably.

Phillip let out an ‘ah’ of realisation.

“So, you _didn’t_ hurt your back during the show, you just decided it would be a good idea to perform whilst already injured despite there being another person with you who was more than capable of doing the job if you’d have asked?”

Barnum grimaced a little, perhaps at the candid wording, perhaps at his own stupidity.

“Yes,” he admitted sheepishly. “And now I’m regretting it.

“Maybe it’ll teach you not to be so stubborn in the future,” Phillip teased and Barnum grinned mischievously.

“I think it’ll take more than a pulled muscle to knock the stubbornness out of me,” he countered, and then sobered. “I think I may be ready to be helped up now, though, Phillip, let you go. The show must go on after all.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

Barnum gave him a smile.

“Well, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” he admitted, and Phillip rolled his eyes but then helped him to his feet. He was steady on his feet once he was up, holding his own weight, but seemed unable to straighten his spine properly, his posture remaining hunched.

“Still think you’d have been able to perform?”

Barnum chuckled lightly. “Maybe not,” he admitted, and then shuffled over to the coat stand in the corner of the room. He stiffly switched his silky ringleader’s coat for his woollen outdoors one, apparently having decided changing completely was not worth the pain, and then placed his hat on his head. He picked up the showman’s cane he had left propped against his desk as he passed, leaning on it with more force than he normally would.

“Happy?” he asked Phillip, motioning to his change of coat, an eyebrow raised. Phillip raised one of his own and sighed.

“About your back, of course not, but I am very pleased you’ve decided to go home and rest it. Are you starting to see sense in your old age, PT?”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Barnum rolled his eyes before catching Phillip’s blue ones. A look passed between them, and then he swallowed. “Thank you, Phillip,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft, and Phillip nodded, not knowing what to say or quite what he was being thanked for. It seemed a little more meaningful than a simple ‘thanks’ for helping the injured man from the floor.

The song echoing through from the stage changed and the moment was broken. “Better get back to the ring, Phillip.” Barnum glanced pointedly towards the door, his voice returning to its normal upbeat tone. “The show must go on, after all.”

 

TBC


	12. "Left or Right?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He curled both hands into fists and held them out in front of him before bumping them together in show, or perhaps as though to transfer the coin, Charity couldn’t quite tell. Then motioned for her to pick one. 
> 
> “Right or left?” he asked, an eyebrow raised expectantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 11! Not my best work, but here you go! 
> 
> This is a follow up to events in yesterday's chapter, but probably makes sense by itself?
> 
> Apologies for any typos, it's late and I need to sleep!
> 
> Enjoy!

Charity entered the house to the sound of laughter and frowned. It wasn’t unusual to hear laughter in their home, and it usually pleased her to enter the house or room to hear excitement ringing from her two girls or the deeper snorted chuckles from Phineas, but on this occasion, it worried her. Well, not so much the laughter itself but more the direction the laughter was coming from. She deposited her coat on one of the hooks beside the door, hanging it between her husband’s deep red one and Caroline’s smaller blue one and, concern stirring lightly in her gut, followed the sound.

The laughter had quietened by the time she reached the lounge, leaving a pregnant silence in its wake. Peeking round the door, she found both Caroline and Helen standing beside the sofa her husband was, blessedly, still reclined on, both waiting excitedly for something with wide, eager eyes and larger than life grins. Phineas was slumped diagonally across the cushions, his shoulders still propped up by his pillow and one pyjama covered leg stretched out along the length of it, the other bent at the knee and his foot just about touching the floor. It didn’t look an overly pleasant position for him to be sitting in, it didn’t look like it would be comfortable for anyone, let alone a man with a painful back. It took her a moment to realise he had very likely rotated from the mostly flat position she had left him in in order to better amuse his girls with whatever it was he was doing.

Despite the discomfort he was in, Charity was used to her husband’s subtle tells, he was grinning widely too.  His eyes were bright and teasing and he seemed absorbed in the delighted expressions of the two girls standing before him as they stared at his hands, both held out before him and curled into loose, palm down fists.

“Hmmm, that one,” Caroline announced, giving her father’s left hand a gentle tap. Phineas raised an eyebrow at her just as Helen snorted and sent an incredulous look her sister’s way.

“Wrong!” she exclaimed, and then leapt forwards to try and pry open the fingers on her father’s right hand. What she was searching for, Charity had no idea, and she leant against the doorway, watching the game play out.  

“Ah ah ah,” Phineas scolded his youngest daughter teasingly as he jolted his hand out of her reach. Both girls missed the flicker of pain that flittered across his expression at the movement, but Charity did not. “That’s cheating, Helen.”

The young girl sighed dramatically, the action so like her father that Charity couldn’t help but smile but did as she had been told and allowed her father some space.

Phineas lowered his hands again and then, his showman’s grin on his lips, looked between his two girls. “Which shall I open first?” he asked, his tone low and thrilling.

“Left, please!”

“Right!”

The girls had spoken at the same time, and Phineas’ gaze flicked back and forth between them theatrically, his breath, and theirs held in anticipation, and then, quite suddenly, he turned over his hands and opened both fists to reveal… nothing. Charity frowned in confusion, as did the two small girls standing beside her husband.

“Where’d it go?” Caroline asked at the same time as Helen exclaimed “Now who’s cheating!”

Phineas laughed at their expressions, Caroline’s confused and a little amused and Helen’s aghast, and then a mischievous grin grew on his lips, the skin beside his eyes crinkling with the size of it. 

“Check your pockets,” he whispered dramatically, and both girls dove their hands into their clothing, their expressions bewildered. Helen’s hand returned first, a shiny silver coin held between her fingers.

“Does that mean I was right?” she demanded excitedly, just as Caroline withdrew another coin from her own dress.

“How did you do that?” Caroline asked, mystified, as Helen stared at the coin identical to hers.

“Magic,” Phineas explained his tone still low as though he was sharing a secret, and Helen’s eyes wided excitedly whilst Caroline gave him a sceptical look.

“Magic isn’t real.” She glared at her little sister as “is too!” was shouted and a pointy elbow collided with her ribs. Phineas raised a hand between the two, sending a briefly disapproving look at his youngest daughter.

“Of course magic is real,” he said once they had stilled, “Even if it’s only what goes on inside your head.” 

Phineas glanced up to his wife still hovering in the doorway, his eyes smiling very likely at the same memory she was, and then looked back at his daughters and beckoned them closer. They leaned towards him, intrigued.

“Maybe you two should head upstairs to play now,” he stage-whispered to them, his voice hushed but still easily loud enough for Charity to hear his words. “Your mother looks as though she’s about to tell me off.”

Both girls turned to look towards the door at his comment and Charity sighed and rolled her eyes before putting on an expression of faux-disapproval and placing her hands on her hips.

“Very impressive magic, Phineas, did you learn that whilst you were supposed to be resting?” she chided, her tone light and teasing despite her scolding words.

The girls giggled and glanced at each other in amusement, but then, seemed to realise their father was serious in suggesting they go upstairs. Caroline made to hand back her coin but Phineas shook his head.

“That’s my treat.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” said Caroline, pocketing the coin again, and then bent down to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “I hope you’re better soon.”

“Me too!” agreed Helen, her arms surrounding him in a gentle hug before she released him and glanced up at her mother. “Don’t be too hard on him, Mummy!” she said, and gave her a brief hug too before darting out of the room alongside her sister.

Phineas expression fell and his eyes tightened as soon as the girls had left the room. He rested his head back into the sofa, grimacing, and then rolled his shoulders as he tried to dissipate the tension in his abused muscles. Charity’s eyebrows furrowed in sympathy, the memory of her husband’s return home the day before, his posture stiff and hunched and his eyes pinched with pain as he walked, his weight leaning heavily through the cane he normally carried for the show, playing in her mind.

“Should we get you a little more comfortable?”  

“Please.” The word was tight and a little pained, and with her heart aching, she went to her husband and slowly helped ease a little straighter on the sofa. He bit his lip as she helped him and the colour drained a little from his skin.

“You push yourself too hard, Phineas,” she scolded gently, as she waited for his discomfort to settle, her hand drawing through his thick waves.

“Well, I had to do something to prevent a death due to boredom,” he explained, his tone aiming for amusement but falling a little flat. “Besides, I was resting, I didn’t leave the sofa, just like you asked.”

“Only because you’re not able, you’d be up and at the circus if you physically could be,” she teased lightly, but there was a note of truth to her tone and one eyebrow was raised in only semi mock disapproval. Phineas rolled his eyes, looking a little sheepish, and then she smiled. “So, what tricks did you teach yourself today? I can see you’re bursting for the opportunity to show off.”

He looked relived at the change in her tone and cast her a weakened but very _Phineas_ smile.

“Ah, well, prepared to be amazed!” He shifted on the sofa, and she waited patiently whilst he extracted another shiny coin from his pocket and then held it up to the light for her inspection. She dipped her head in agreement that it was, indeed, simply money and nothing more and then, after a quickly flashed grin, he quite unexpectedly threw the coin into the air.

He caught it easily when it fell back down despite his supine position, the coin ending up trapped between his clapped hands. He curled them both into fists and then held them out in front of him before bumping them together in show, or perhaps as though to transfer the coin, Charity couldn’t quite tell. Then he motioned for her to pick one.

“Right or left?” he asked, an eyebrow raised expectantly. She smiled, more at his expression than the trick itself.

“I know it isn’t in either, I saw this part. I don’t know where you’ve hidden it this time, but it isn’t in my pocket. I’ve been watching.”   

“Cheat,” he teased, opening his fists to show her his empty hands and then, an impish grin on his lips, beckoned her forwards. She frowned at the change in his performance but approached, bending down when he motioned until they were almost nose to nose. She had been expecting him to whisper something, as she had seen him do with his girls just before, but instead, his hand snaked up around her neck, softly pulling her closer.

The kiss he initiated was gentle, more a peak on her lips than a proper kiss, and ended before she was ready for it to, his lips curling into a smile under hers. She felt something cold behind her ear, and when she reached up to retrieve it, she found a silver coin caught in her uptied hair.

She pulled it free, her expression bemused.

“Very clever,” she agreed, rolling her eyes at his obvious distraction method. Phineas looked pleased with himself too, his eyes bright and a mischievous grin on his lips.

“Check your pocket.”

Charity laughed in disbelief and then, eyes smiling just as his were, dipped her hand into her clothes and withdrew another identical coin.

“You’re unbelievable, you know,” she told him fondly, and he shrugged, looking pleased with himself, then leant up to meet her and pressed another, this time honest, kiss to her still smiling lips.  


	13. Signs of Affection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phillip was not used to seeing affection; it was simply not done in the upper-class world he had come from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 12! I'm tired, Enjoy!

Phillip was not used to seeing affection; it was simply not done in the upper-class world he had come from. People loved each other, or sometimes they did, marriages were more frequently born of status than love, and parents cared for their children, or cared what other’s thought of them at least, and yet, none of it was ever shown, and certainly not where others might see.

When he had been very little, his mother had tucked him in at night, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead as she left, and his father had, on the rare occasion he wasn’t too busy to notice him or already furious, for what he was rarely sure, reached down and ruffled his hair or patted his shoulder with an encouraging hand. As he had grown older, though, the goodnight kisses had dwindled and then stopped, as had the ruffles of his hair. The shoulder claps had continued for a little longer, but eventually they had faded into a memory too. After he turned fifteen, the only purposeful physical contact he received from either of his parents was a backhanded hit from his father at seventeen when they had finally noticed the whisky missing from their liquor cabinet.

In the circus, though, things were different. People were affectionate there, not in a way that made others uncomfortable, but more as though there was simply no need to hide the everyday touches or hand holding or casual hugs that passed between lovers, friends, and relatives.

It was a little disconcerting at first, Phillip found.

Barnum especially was very openly affectionate, he was very confident in general, so it only made sense he was confident at invading what Phillip considered to be other people’s personal space too. He greeted Lettie with a kiss on her cheek and comforted her with a gentle finger just brushing the edge of her beard. He would playfully swat at Charles’ head when he sassed him, his hand always missing his head by mere fractions of an inch, just about skimming along the top of his dark hair. He would take Anne’s hands gently when she tore them on the ropes, examining the broken skin before sending her off for bandages and he would clap WD on the shoulder in greeting or congratulations when a new trick went smoothly.

It took Phillip a few weeks to get used to it all, so unused to the warmth that passed around the troupe, and a few weeks more than that to realise maybe he had been missing out.

As he grew to know Barnum and his family, he began to see more of the love and care that passed between them. He danced with Charity, not the slow, formal sort Phillip had seen time and time again, but instead with feeling and laughter and love, both of them focused only on each other as they flew. He would kiss her playfully, his lips on her forehead, or casually wrap his arm around her waist, pulling her close and holding her beside him, and she would always smile almost absentmindedly and lean her head onto his shoulder.

He played the sort of games with his girls his parents would never have played with him, chasing them around the rings until they let him catch them and take them rolling to the floor. The three of them always ended up with ruffled clothes and coated in sand but laughing breathlessly and grinning, their eyes alight. He would tickle them until they squealed and swing them around and around until they were shrieking with delight and he would comfort them when they were sad or angry. He would hug them tightly when they cried, his hand rubbing gentle circles over their backs as he told them how everything would be okay in the end.

Phillip often found himself watching Barnum interact with his daughters; the man was such a contrast to his own more distant father, and he found himself almost jealous of the two so obviously loved little girls.

Barnum was more cautious with him, he realised shortly after he had joined the circus. He wasn’t cold and distant like his parents had been, instead he was friendly and open and teased him wildly just as he did with everyone else, his eyes bright with humour. But yet, he kept more of distance between them than he did with the other members of his troupe, didn’t invade his personal space, and kept the touches between them few and far between. Phillip wondered if he had sensed his initial unease.

Time had passed since then though, years in fact, and they had both evolved as people, how could they not with the Jenny Lind tour and then the fire and the becoming of partners as they rebuilt the circus in a tent on the docks. They had grown closer as time passed, too, and more comfortable and then things, important things, had changed and, eventually, Phineas had slowly gained his own new signs of affection just for him.  

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Phillip startles at his partner’s voice, preoccupied enough his approach had been missed, evoking a light chuckle from the man who stands just behind his chair. Phineas leans on him gently, his bare forearms resting on his shoulders, the rolled up sleeves of his shirt tickling against his ears and Phillip tilts his head back until it rests against his stomach. Phineas gazes down at him, his expression soft and tender and his eyes crinkled beautifully with the size of his soppy, still amused grin and gently rubs the pad of his thumb along his cheekbone.

“I love you too,” Phillip hums, because although the words themselves had not been spoken, he is now more than familiar with the message that particular sign of affection of Phineas’ conveys.


	14. Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phineas’ heart ached at the sight of the glowing red silhouette of his circus burning against the hazy night sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 13! Apologies for typos, I hope you enjoy!

Phineas’ heart ached at the sight of the glowing red silhouette of his circus burning against the hazy night sky. Smoke filled the air, acrid and bitter, and ashes and soot rained from above, falling from where it had been carried upwards by the burning heat of the flames. The air was hot too, the heat of the blaze almost unbearable even as far from the fire as they were.

His first thought though, wasn’t of the circus itself and the work he had put in to building it, shaping it from the failing museum it had been all those months before, but instead for the people who would normally be inside it, for the troupe and the audience and his overcompensated apprentice. His second was for the animals, the elephants and horses and lions that made the show what it was, so tame and yet kept in cages and pens they would be unable to escape from by themselves.

And at first, it had seemed as though all was bearable, the building burning but the beings usually in it alive and safe and watching beside him as their home and workplace bunt down, their belongings being consumed in the ravaging blaze.

Until, quite suddenly, Phillip had startled, and his eyes had widened and the words “W.D., where’s Anne?” had left his lips. A moment of realisation had passed, and then, before Phineas had the chance to realise what he was going to do, let alone stop him, he had taken off at a run towards the glowing orange mouth of the circus building. Phineas had reached out to him, his arm stretched uselessly towards his friend as he ran, but then his attention was stolen by W.D. as he made a break to follow the younger man and join the search for his missing sister.

It took two of them to hold him back, and by the time he had been able to turn back to where his junior partner had before been, the man had vanished into the fiery entrance of the circus. Anne, though, had then appeared, tearing around the side of the circus, tripping and jumping over rubble as she all but threw herself into her brother’s arms and Phineas had called uselessly to the then missing man, his voice lost in the roar of the flames and the crowd and the yelling of the firemen and crackling of the building as it burnt.

Seconds had passed, and his family had arrived, and Phillip stayed inside the fire, unaware Anne was safe, held tightly by her brother as she stared in horror at the scene before her, and he realised what it was that he needed to do. Charity knew what he had realised too, she was always so good at reading him, his emotions like a book to her, and her expression fell, her mouth open and a useless protest on her lips.

A look passed between them, his eyes an apology, and then, with one last look at his wonderful wife and amazing daughters he turned and ran towards the roaring inferno his circus had become. He barely heard their screams when he left.

It went against all instinct to leap through the curtain of flames guarding the entrance, his head screaming at him to run the other way, back to Charity and Caroline and Helen, but his throbbing heart overpowered, forcing him onwards in search of the selfless man he had just watched jump these very flames. At least he knew the person he was searching for was in the building, which was more than he could say for Phillip.

The entrance room of the circus was red and flickering and blisteringly hot and the air was thick and clagging with smoke. It stung his eyes and burnt his throat with every dreaded but unstoppable inhale and sent his lungs spasming violently in search of fresh, oxygenated air, only to inhale more soot with every cough. The coat held over his head did little to help, only providing the smallest shelter from the flames that rose from the floor and the ash that hung in the air and the scorching embers that rained from the ceiling above.

He felt and heard rather than saw the roof fell in, the scorching wave of heat forcing him to his hands and knees as the wooden rafters collapsed to the floor, landing so close behind him the splintered shards clipped his shoulder as he passed. They crashed and creaked as they fell and collided with the burning wood of the entrance hall floor with a shuddering bang, loud and explosive even above the furious roaring of the flames.

It didn’t even cross his mind how close he had been to almost certain death as he pushed himself to his feet, stumbling on shaking limbs away from the rubble behind him.

The jacket he had been holding over his head had been lost when he fell, swallowed up by flames or broken wood or maybe just not visible in the angry red light of the fire but he carried on without it, heading towards the bedrooms deep behind the ring because that seemed like a sensible place to start his search.

His heart pounded in his throat as he stumbled on, disorientated and lost in the crackling, soot filled, hazy orange world his circus had become. His vision span and his legs felt weak and his head ached as his body became more and more aware of the lack of oxygen in the scorching air. His lungs and throat felt burnt and raw and his eyes stung from the soot and heat, but he kept walking, kept stumbling onwards into the depths of his burning, breaking circus.

He fell again somewhere backstage of the ring, in the room where the pullies for the rings and ropes were, he thought, tripping on what felt to be a lantern hidden in the smoke, likely abandoned by its owner in their haste to leave the inferno the building had rapidly become, and falling to the floor, his legs too weak and uncoordinated to catch him. He had pushed himself up again quickly, because though the air was cleaner on the floor, the smoke less thick, and his lungs could finally breathe in something other than scorching soot, he was neither going to find Phillip nor make it back out of the building alive by laying there.

He hadn’t gone much further when he fell again, this time tripping over something soft and solid and heavy, and landing on the hard, scolding wood laying on top of whatever it was he had tripped on. He had rolled on the burning floor, disorientated and coughing up the soot his gasped inhale had brought into his lungs before finally sitting up and staring through the smoke at whatever it was he had tripped over.

It had taken him so much longer than it should have done to recognise the form as a person, and then even longer to recognise the person as Phillip.

He was nearly indistinguishable from his surroundings through the smoke and ash, both his face and clothes dark with soot and covered in a layer of embers and ash, just as his own must be too. He was bleeding from a messy wound on his forehead, the dark liquid glistening morbidly in the flickering orange light of the flames, and his blue eyes were only semi open, hazy slits, unfocused and unmoving but bright against his charred surroundings.

He was bleeding from his side too, the wound visible through a scorched hole in his shirt, a burning graze angry on his abdomen where the piece of timber pinning him to the ground was resting.

Phineas lifted it without thought, barely feeling the pain of its unbearable warmth against the skin of his hands as he removed it from the body of his friend. Phillip stirred as it was removed, his eyelids fluttering and a groan escaping his lips, but he remained unresponsive to Phineas’ choked, coughing calls as he shook him. A moment passed, the two men together in the scorching flames and crackling fire and the soot and smoke and ash, and then, Phineas realised what he had to do and lifted his limp form into his arms.

The stumble back to the entrance felt somehow longer. Phillip was surprisingly heavy, and Phineas’ legs were weak and uncoordinated and shaking from adrenaline and hypoxia but he struggled on. His vision blurred and span, his balance questionable, and dark spots swam sickeningly in his view. His lungs spasmed uselessly instead of breathing, coughing up soot only to inhale more, and his head ached for oxygen, but he carried on because beside from collapsing there and sealing the fate of both him and Phillip, there was little else he could do.

Somehow, just when he was sure he could go on for no longer, he found the exit through the smoke and stumbled back through the flames. The air was cool and oxygenated inferno that had engulfed the circus he had worked so hard to build.

Helen yelled when she saw him, her expression lighting up like the flames he had stumbled from, and then more shouts and sobs and gasps landed upon his deaf ears as he carried the barely conscious man he had saved from the burning wreckage towards the crowd waiting for them with baited breaths and stunned, terrified expressions.

He lowered Phillip to the floor before his family, ending up kneeling beside him, a hand on his shoulder and an ear to his mouth as he listened for the breaths that thankfully wheezed almost uselessly from his sooty lungs.

“He’s taken in a lot of smoke, he’s still breathing, come on,” he heard himself say, his voice rough and his words muddled but the meaning clear, and then, as though appearing from nowhere, a stretcher was there, and men were lifting his limp, barely moving body from the ground.

Phineas stood, his head spinning and his lungs still violently coughing as they tried to rid themselves of the smoke and soot and ash he had inhaled, and found himself enveloped in the arms of his children, Helen’s around his middle and Caroline’s stretching up to loop his neck. He stooped to hug them back, holding them tightly to him, and then straightened again to take his wife into his arms, their children ending up comfortingly held between them.   

Together, they watched the circus burn, standing amongst the troupe and the elephants and the firemen and the members of the public and although Phineas’ heart ached at the sight of what he had strived so hard to achieve quite literally going up in smoke, he found he was also relieved because although the building was burning, the people who lived and worked there were at least safe and standing beside him and Phillip, although not there, was no longer caught inside either.

And so, he stood there watching the inferno ravage the circus he had worked so hard to form, his chest still heaving raggedly for air and heart pounding in his throat, but with his wife and girls, who he had abandoned for so long once again held tenderly in his arms. He knew he had lost a lot that night, money and possessions and the building he had so riskily bought, but there was so much more he could have lost, and so for what he still had, he was glad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Phin, if only he knew what was coming next!


	15. Soulmates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There had been writing on Phillip’s arms for as long as he could remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 14!! So, this is a soulmates au, where the writinfg of your soul ate appears written on your arms. 
> 
> I aim to continue this on day 16, if people are interested?
> 
> (The pronouns in this make it maybe a little confusing, just go with it for now, until day 16)
> 
> I hope you enjoy?

There had been writing on Phillip’s arms for as long as he could remember. He had been born with it, apparently, the messy scrawl of an older child, the words miniaturised to fit on his tiny arms.

It had unnerved his parents, and his nanny, apparently, for one would normally not be born with the words of their soulmate on their skin as the only person who could write there should have either been too young to write or not born yet at all. His parents were also unnerved, although less so, by the appearance of the script on both arms, the writing the same messy scrawl but backwards slanting on his right arm and the letters standing straight on his left, the owner clearly having little preference on which hand she wrote with.

Phillip never wrote back to the messages his soulmate left on his arms. A reply was never invited for a start, maybe she had given up on receiving a response long before he was capable of writing one, but he found he was a little unsure of contacting the girl the adults who surrounded him were seemingly so afraid of.

He found he liked the messages he received though, in a nervous, rebellious kind of way. They were a sort of contact to the world outside his home and the stifling upper classes for a start, and then, as he grew, he realised how much he liked that the words she was writing were written solely for him. It was nice to have the attention of someone for something other than a scolding.

Sometimes the words on his arm were directed to him, ‘good morning’ he received on a fairly regular basis, but sometimes they were just little, absent minded comments about what was happening in her life, about things she had seen or done or her days of working on the railroad. Phillip was curious about her job, few girls worked and even fewer doing any sort of manual labour, but he wasn’t ready to yet break his written silence.

More often than not, the messages she wrote were nonsensical, coming across like lyrical little snippets of poetry, lines of words about millions of dreams and the bright colours that flitted in her head and a world of her own existing only inside her head. The girl was clearly a dreamer, he would think, smiling, as he pushed the sleeves of his shirt back down, buttoning the cuffs and, as he was expected to do, hiding the writing from the world.  

It wasn’t just him who was expected to hide his arms, it was common courtesy amongst the upper classes; no one wanted to see words so personal and intimate engraved upon your skin. Even once soulmates had been partnered and married and the need for the writing stopped, arms were still kept hidden, sheltered from view despite there often being nothing there to hide.

The messages continued as he grew, always present, never discouraged by his lack of replies, and despite the peculiarity of his soulmate, he found he enjoyed her presence and the familiar tingle of her writing on his skin, the words she had written bringing a warmth to his heart in the cold, detached upper-class world he lived in. He was still lonely, still lost, still wanting so much more than what he could ever have amongst the stifling swells his parents forced him to socialise with, but the carefree, often slightly crazy sounding comments scrawled onto his arms at least helped to light a spark in his otherwise dreary world.

Sometimes, he wondered if he ought to write back, but for some reason, he never did.

‘She’s pregnant. I don’t know what to do,’ he had received one day when he was 19 and he had stopped and stared at the scruffy, familiar cursive scrawled onto the pale skin of his right forearm. The writing was shakier than normal, as though her hand had been trembling as she wrote the words, and Phillip found his heart aching sadly for his troubled soulmate. Who’s pregnant, he had wanted to ask, confused and curious, but instead, he had picked up the pen on his desk and printed a careful, ‘I’m sorry, I hope you work it out soon’, onto his left arm. The words faded with a tingle, the same sort of sensation that occurred when a message appeared on his skin, just as he had heard they would.

The reply took minutes, and whilst he waited, he worried that he would spark her curiosity and she would hamper him with questions, but instead, a simple ‘thank you’ was all he received.

The writing on his arm returned to its normal light-hearted style after that, but then, six months later he woke to find the words ‘Baby born at 6:23 am, 6lb4oz. She’s beautiful’ scrawled hurriedly on his skin.

‘Congratulations!’ he had written back, his second message to his soulmate, not knowing if that was what was said to a woman who, whilst not a parent of the baby, definitely seemed closely involved. He wondered if maybe the baby belonged his soulmate’s sister, if she had one, or another close relative, someone who had maybe confided in her about a baby she wasn’t supposed to be having.

It seemed, though, that the baby lived with his soulmate. He often received messages about her alongside the ones he had always been sent, sometimes proud little comments of things she had learnt as she grew, smiling and laughing and then sitting and crawling and eventually walking. Sometimes they were amusing little stories of the mischief she got up to, eating coal seemed to be something she rather enjoyed, and sometimes they were just the grumbles of what sounded a lot like parenthood, occasionally in the middle of the night, his soulmate apparently close enough to the baby that the midnight feeds and changes involved her.

Another baby arrived a few years later, another girl, he had been told. By this point, Phillip had given up trying to understand the living arrangements of his soulmate and the relationship she had with the mother of the children. He could have asked, he knew, but that seemed like prying into the life of a woman he was pretty sure he would never encounter. It was unheard of for soulmates not to meet, not to end up together and happily married, but then it was unheard of for babies to be born already covered in writing, and so he accepted that he would likely live out his life alone. Besides, whoever she was had clearly settled down, living with another woman and two little girls.

‘I’m failing them,’ he had received one day, the writing shaky and scrawled and angry. The ink looked heavy, as though she had been pushing the pen to her skin with a lot more force than was necessary to write them.

‘Please don’t hurt yourself,’ he had replied, followed instantly by ‘what makes you think that?’.

The response had been slow to come, but at least when it had the ink was lighter, the force gone, but still as shaky and slightly smudged. ‘Because we have no money,’ the backwards slanting messy script had said.

Phillip had replied with ‘Why, what happened?’, guilt stirring in his stomach for hating his own, overly lavish lifestyle, but for once, he had received no reply.

A few days later, when the next message appeared on his arm, she seemed to be back to her normal, buoyant self once again.

‘Money sorted?’ he had written, for once asking a question of his own.

‘For now,’ the response had been before she had excitedly written to him about the youngest baby’s newfound ability to walk. 

At some point, Phillip started drinking. There wasn’t a day he could pinpoint, but eventually he realised the whisky and champagne he had enjoyed at parties in the company of others had become something he needed just to get through another tediously repetitive day. He thought about stopping, not because he knew of his parents’ disapproval but because he knew it wasn’t healthy, but he found he didn’t want to.

He moved out from his parents’ house when he was 21, as soon as they had allowed him to. At first, they had given him an allowance, but then, quite by chance he had stumbled into the world of playwriting. His plays at first, were cunning and witty and dark, but it turned out people didn’t want to watch plays like that, plays that prodded the mind and stirred the conscience, and so he had reluctantly taken himself down to their level and written the sort of plays they were bound to like.

The swells indeed had liked them, just as he knew they would, his ability to write was his one point of self-confidence, and slowly his reputation grew, along with his audiences and his income. There came a point, a few years into writing, where he could support himself and his allowance was stopped and, finally, he was financially free of his parents.

The drinking continued though, a scandal, so he had heard it called, and the problem had grown until some mornings he would wake slumped on the floor, usually, thankfully, in his apartment, with few memories of what had happened the night before. Sometimes, he would be able to vaguely recall writing on his arm those nights and more often than not, the replies were still embossed with dark ink on his skin for him to see.

‘Please stop this,’ he had read on more occasions than he could remember. ‘You once told me to stop hurting myself, and I listened, so please listen to me when I tell you to do the same.’

Despite the words on his arms, he didn’t stop, continuing in the same rut as always. He wrote plays, and he drank, and he was miserable.

His soulmate, seemed to be doing a little better than she had been though, the money troubles eventually, after years of struggle, sorting themselves out. How though, she never said.

One day, shortly before his 30th birthday, a man came up to him as he swallowed whisky from his hipflask outside the theatre and offered him a drink. It was P.T. Barnum, from the circus, it turned out, the show where people came out looking so much happier than when they went in, and so, he had accepted, and followed the man to the bar.

Barnum was a peculiar man in many ways. He was larger than life and bold and charismatic and surprisingly good at dancing for a man of his age and stature, but what surprised Phillip most, was that he rolled his sleeves up after he finished his first whisky, revealing lightly tanned and muscular but unblemished forearms. His wife, Phillip thought he was married, he could vaguely recall seeing a photo of them standing behind their two daughters outside the circus, was not much of a writer, it seemed. It was a little freeing to see the bare skin of the man’s arms after coming from a world where people were determined to hide it.

That evening, he had stumbled home from the circus, his head still reeling at the sight of all the exposed forearms, or possibly all the alcohol he had consumed. It was freeing to be there, just as Barnum had sung, the uncovered skin and the writing that was usually hidden just an example of the replacement of the stiflingly judgemental atmosphere he had been used to with one of open acceptance and compassion. No one there hid their arms. No one was ashamed.

He had sat down at his desk, his head spinning and his judgment clouded with whisky, and had written the fifth message he could remember onto the pale skin of his left forearm. ‘I just did something crazy,’ he had printed, his cursive messy with alcohol. ‘Is crazy good?’ The words had appeared almost instantly, and he had stared at them, trying to figure out the answer himself. ‘Yes’, he had written eventually, his first honest smile in as long as he could remember playing on his lips as he wrote. 

 

TBC


	16. Cruelty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phineas was only 6 when he was first shown how cruel the world could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 15! This one is sad, and I am sorry, but the ending is hopeful, if that helps. 
> 
> Also, warnings for major character death, not Phineas or Phillip, but still pretty important. 
> 
> Sorry again, Enjoy?

Phineas was only 6 when he was shown how cruel the world could be.

One week he had had a family, one that was small, just him and his parents, and not overly well off, but one that was happy and loving all the same. His mother would sing to him and tell him stories and his father would teach him cricket at the weekends and swing him around in the air as though he was flying until he was simultaneously elated and nauseous. They loved each other just as they loved him. Life was good, and he was happy.

The next week, his mother was gone. She had died overnight whilst he was asleep, taken by a sudden illness with a name he was too young to remember, and his father had become a tearful shadow of the man he had once been. Phineas was still loved, he knew he was, but the playful, teasing, mischievous father he had known was gone. A memory, alongside his mother.

He had been taken out of school when he was 12, his father, cold and hard and still mourning, deciding it was time for him to learn the family trade. He had followed him to jobs, carrying rolls of fabric and watching and learning the dreary, boring, repetitive skill, and whilst he was there he learnt of the cruelty of the acidic, disdainful tongues of the upper classes.

Phineas found he hated both the work and the words, and from the age to 12 and 4 months, he was certain he did not want to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Despites its awfulness, though, the time following his father to work had led him to Charity, and to a friendship that would grow into a love that would last a lifetime.

Charity’s father was a cruel man, Phineas had that found out soon after they had become friends. He wasn’t abusive, he didn’t hit her, but he wasn’t at all pleasant to her either. He locked her in her room as punishment if she behaved like the fun-loving girl she was rather than the lady he wanted her to be, and although she soon learnt how to escape, Phineas still didn’t think it was kind.

Although Mr Hallett didn’t hit his daughter, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t hit Phineas, as they all had discovered one Tuesday afternoon. The open-handed hit was hard and had stung his cheek and span his head with the force and Phineas’ father, although saying nothing to the man who paid him, had been furious. He also, it turned out, wasn’t above sending his only child away to a school he knew she would hate, where their only lessons were on manners and courtesy and how to be a respectable upper-class wife.

Phineas had missed her when she had gone, and she had missed him too.  

The cruelty of the world had stuck again shortly before his 14th birthday. It had taken his father this time, leaving him orphaned and alone and after a few weeks, when the rent ran out, homeless. He ended up on the streets, with just the clothes he was wearing and the few belongings he could carry and not a penny to his name.

He stole to eat, because as much as he hated the dishonesty of stealing from hard working people like his father had been, he was starving. Sometimes he got away with it, but other time he didn’t, and they caught him, and he ended up still shaking with hunger but also bruised and sore to go with the pain in his empty stomach. He didn’t understand how life could be quite so unfair.

For months he had nothing save for the clothes on his back and sometimes, when he had been lucky, a small amount of change which he would keep in his shoe and reluctantly spend on food when he was dizzy and weak and desperate. Sometimes he worked for the change, sold papers or ran errands of carried things for the elderly, and sometimes he found it on the floor, dropped by someone far less valuing of the small change than him. Occasionally, when he had little choice and the opportunity presented itself, he would regretfully steal it.   

He was miserable, how could he not be, and the letters from Charity that somehow always found their way were the only brightness in the cloud of hunger and cold and misery that had become his life. 

Eventually, he had stumbled across the man calling for worker for the railroad, and for the first time in months, he was hopeful.

Years passed, and he grown and mellowed and lost his anger at the world for the cruelty that had been present for so much of his childhood. He had money, saved from his time on the railway, and some semblance of financial stability and eventually he had given in and married Charity. Her father hated him for it, but it was her who had insisted on the marriage, laughing at his protests, at his argument that she could find a much better man than him, one who could provide her with the life she was used to. “But it’s you who I love,” she had said, and silenced him with a kiss.

Over the next few years, their love had grown and matured, and then, buy the time they were 30, they had been blessed with not one but two beautiful, healthy daughters.

Money was tight, their finances only just workable, and Phineas stressed and worried and worked tirelessly in an effort to keep their small family afloat. Charity and his girls were happy though, and they were loved, just as he had been when he was small before the cruelty of the world had come.

Eventually, he had stuck gold, both literally and figuratively, in the form of the circus. He gained money, and fame, and supporting his family was no longer an issue. For a while, things were good.

The cruelty was still there though, it always would be, he realised. He could still see it in the eyes of the protesters as they tormented the members of his troupe and hear it in the tongues of the swells as they made their snide remarks about the family who didn’t fit in and in the young ballerinas who relentlessly teased his daughter when she danced. He could see it on the street, in the hunger of the homeless and the grief of the widowed and the heartache of the family of those taken too young.

It was there even in the most unexpected of places, like in the tongue of his beautifully kind-hearted daughter when she had turned to him and sneered, the words “Ballet isn’t like the circus, you can’t just fake it,” falling harshly from her lips and said to hurt.

His life had all gone a little wrong again soon after that. The circus had burnt down, and he had very nearly lost Phillip, and then very nearly lost his wife and his girls. He had lost his home, and a great deal of his money and all of it had been entirely his fault.

He had scraped together enough to buy a small house in the city for his family, and caravans for the members of his circus who had failed to find somewhere else to stay. Slowly, he and Phillip and the rest of the troupe had rebuilt the circus, and although the end result was inside a brightly coloured tent rather than a building of brick and mortar, it was even better than it had been before.

Everything seemed good, and for a while, the cruelty of the world was not quite forgotten, but at least gone from the forefront of his mind.

And then a few years later, one cold afternoon in February, the world had taken Charity from him too and the cruelty of it all had returned in full.

He had been strong for his girls, both teenagers nearing the cusp of adulthood but still far too young to have lost their mother. He had held them as they sobbed and told them their mother wouldn’t want them to be sad but rather to remember the happy times they had had in the past and spend their futures enjoying life and finding the magic even in the simplest things, just as she had. 

He found he drifted thorough the days and weeks that followed almost on autopilot, exhausted and numb, and too busy sorting out the things that needed sorting when a person passed and putting on a brave act for his daughters and helping Phillip with the running of their circus to really think about what had happened. Not that he was complaining, he didn’t want to think about it.

At night, when he was alone, his veneer would crumble, and he would cry, his broken heart aching, until he fell asleep, no more tears left to fall and no more energy to stay wake.

It was Phillip who saved him from himself, who had come to find him late one night, worried because although Phineas had said he was fine every day in the weeks that had passed since his wife’s death, the bags under his haunted eyes and his pale, almost unhealthy complexion, and the suddenly looser fitting of his clothes said otherwise. He had held him whilst he cried that night, one hand rubbing gentle circles into his back, not seeming to notice the salt that was staining the shoulder of his waistcoat. He hadn’t shushed him, he had let him cry as though he realised crying was what he needed. He had stayed until Phineas fell asleep, exhausted, his hand still holding tightly onto Phillip’s.

He had still been there in the morning, still in the same clothes he had been in the night before and he made him tea and scrambled eggs and sat with him whilst he ate. They had talked afterwards, about things serious and sad but things that seemed to need discussion, and Phineas regretfully admitted that he felt just a little better afterwards.

Phillip came to his house the next day too, making dinner for the four of them and making sure all of them ate. He was there the day after too, and the day after that, until somehow, they settled into a routine. He never stayed over, always went home after dinner, but Phineas found himself looking forwards to those few hours in the early evening when he didn’t feel quite so alone.

Time passed, and slowly, Phineas found his life returning to some semblance of normal. He stopped crying at night, and started to sleep rather than eventually pass out, and his appetite returned enough that he at least stopped losing weight.

Eventually, he found he was enjoying his time at the circus again, the thrill finally returning to his veins when he performed, as well as the time he spent both there and at home with his daughters. They seemed happier too, living life for the magic of the small things, just as he had told them Charity would have wanted.

He found he enjoyed the time he spent will Phillip too, and they started to see more of each other after work in the evenings and during their days off, doing nothing but relaxing and appreciating the time they could spend together. Eventually, both Caroline and Helen left home, both with their own lives and their own futures to fulfil. He ended up spending even more time with Phillip, seeking refuge with him from the loneliness of his empty house but also loving every moment of the time they spent together.

But in that, he realised, there was another cruelty, because the more time he spent with the brilliant young man who had saved him, the more he realised the feelings he had for him had migrated from friendship to something more akin to what he had felt for Charity when they had first been reunited after his time on the railway all those years ago. His heart had broken again at that, at the cruel irony that the man who had saved him from the heartbreak caused by the loss of his wife had turned out to be someone who he loved just the same. It felt like cheating, and he found he felt sick with himself.

Remarkably, it was Caroline who was the one to solve it all for him.

“You love Phillip, Daddy, don’t you?” she asked one evening when she came to visit, and he looked up at her with haunted eyes because how could she have said to him so calmly what he hadn’t even allowed himself to admit to his own heart. His expression much have given his feelings away because she had got up from her seat, her expression kind, and had settled beside him, her dainty hand taking hold of his larger one. “It’s okay if you do, you know?”

He swallowed heavily, and then before he had a chance to stop himself had thickly whispered “But it isn’t, how could it be?”

His gaze dropped to his left hand and the silver ring he still wore on his third finger and Caroline gently squeezed the other one she still held in hers.

“Because mum isn’t with us anymore, and because she’d want you to be happy just as she would want Helen and me to be, and if being with Phillip is what will make you happy, then that is what she would want.”

“It just feels wrong.”

“I know,” she agreed, he voice sad. “It feels wrong to be happy sometimes, and to enjoy the things she would have loved when she isn’t here to experience them too, but I know that isn’t how she would have wanted me to live. She wouldn’t want me to feel guilty for living my life just as she wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for living yours. Mum isn’t here anymore, Daddy, and she won’t be here again. But Phillip is here, and, as odd as it sounds, I know mum would want you to be with him if that’s what’s going to make you finally happy again.”

He looked at his daughter, when had she become so wise, at her bright, honest eyes, and realised what he had to do.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and she had stood and kissed him on the cheek.

“Go and find him,” she said, a gentle smile playing on her lips.

He found Phillip at his house, which wasn’t exactly a surprised. Phillip did look surprised to see him though, a frown on his lips and his eyebrows knitting together in worry.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, and Phineas had nodded and nervously suggested they go inside.

“Caroline came and spoke to me this evening,” he said once the door was closed, leaving them hovering in the hallway. Phillip’s frown deepened, and he tilted his head to the side curiously.

“Oh?”

“She said,” Phineas started only to break off and lick his lips. He wiped his sweaty palms somewhat discretely on his trousers. “She said, it’s okay if I love you.”

There was a pause, pregnant and heavy.

“And do _you_ think it’s okay?” Phillip asked softly, his expression curiously unreadable. Phineas’ hands drew together, holding the ring on his third left finger and with his trembling right hand. He thought for a moment, before realising, eventually, that he did, and nodded not trusting his voice, his teeth worrying his lip.

“And do you love me?” The words were slow and cautious.

Phineas looked down at him with bright, teary eyes. The world could be cruel, he knew, but it could also be kind, and he was thankful for Caroline and Helen and the many happy years he had got to spend with the woman he loved but now he was thankful too for the man who stood before him, the man who he loved and who hopefully loved him in return, the man who had, in more ways that one, repaired his broken heart.

“Yes, Phillip, I love you,” he replied almost instantly, voice cracking.

Phillip swallowed visibly and let out a shaky sigh. He looked relived and confused and guilty all at once.  

“Then, if it’s okay with you,” he said, voice thick, and eyes burning with emotion, “I’d like to say I love you too.”

Phineas nodded, and Phillip’s expression morphed into a shaky, relieved smile.

“I’d like that,” he admitted, a shy, tearful grin on his own lips and his heart once again, after so many years, thrumming warmly in his chest.


	17. Harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after he had agreed to join the circus, Phillip woke hungover, which was not unusual, but with a hopefulness in his heart that was. He hadn’t had to force himself from his bed as he so often did, instead rising swiftly because, for once, he had somewhere to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 16! Yeesh guys, here you go, 3000 words to end my soulmates AU, an epilogue of sorts included. I hope it lives up to your expectations!
> 
> Apologies for any typos!

The morning after he had agreed to join the circus, Phillip woke hungover, which was not unusual, but with a hopefulness in his heart that was. He hadn’t had to force himself from his bed as he so often did, instead rising swiftly because, for once, he had somewhere to be.

The nerves of what he was doing and worries of what his forever judgmental parents would think had grown in his stomach as he readied himself, and by the time he was trying, and failing, to eat the toast he had made for breakfast, he was feeling more than a little nauseous. Not that he was unused to feeling queasy in the mornings; the volume of whisky he typically consumed was never kind on ones stomach.

It was as he was sitting at the table, nibbling reluctantly at his toast, that he had picked up the pen he had left there night before and rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt to reveal his forearm. ‘Wish me luck’ he had written in tiny, anxious script just below his elbow. The words vanished from his skin with the familiar tingle and he had waited for a reply, but when there was none by the time he had finished subjecting his unsettled stomach to his morning toast, he had given up, frowning at the silence of his usually chatty soulmate, and headed up the stairs to finish getting ready.

The reply had come through just as he was about to roll down his sleeve to leave the house, the writing messier than normal and looking rushed. ‘Good luck’, it read, and then underneath, ‘Ugh my head! What makes you repeatedly put yourself through this suffering?’.

Phillip read the words and frowned, a little hurt by the directness of the comment before tugging down his sleeve and leaving his apparently hungover soulmate to her misery. He buttoned the cuff and pulled on his coat, and then, with a deep, nervous breath, headed out of his door and towards the circus.

The circus, to his amazement, was every bit as freeing as he had remembered.

Barnum had met him at the door, looking both excited and a little hungover, with his sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows as they had been the night before and had ushered him inside to the ring where most of his troupe was sat. They were no longer dressed in the brightly coloured costumes they had been wearing the night before, instead they now wore shirts and trousers and skirts and shawls in drab, dreary colours just as people in the lower classes tended. That was where the normality stopped though, for not only were most of the troupe look unusual in their natural appearances, they also all looked happy and comfortable and entirely at ease amongst each other, chatting and laughing and singing, and just as the night before, many of them with their arms exposed, the dark writing visible.

Phillip found himself trying not to look.  

Barnum had silenced them with a clear of his throat, and then, once they were quiet, he had introduced Phillip to them all, his tone almost proud. Phillip had stood beside him in the middle of the ring, feeling awfully exposed under their curious gazes. But then, when Barnum’s words were done, they had called their greetings and cheered, and he had found himself grinning shyly, a thrum in his heart at their warmth.

From that moment on, Phillip threw himself into his life at the circus despite his parents’ disapproval and after a while, once the terrifying newness of it all had passed, he found he loved every second he spent there. He wasn’t entirely sure what his purpose was, to work at attracting the swells, he had been told, but he often found himself assisting Barnum with the general running of the show instead. He soon knew the dances and songs by heart, even though he maintained his objections to participating in the show itself.

Sometimes he was sent running errands, and other times he was left sorting out the advertisements for their new acts or promotions to attract more customers.

Once, he found himself helping Barnum pen the lyrics of upcoming songs. The ringleader had seemed impressed with his poetic tongue, and he found himself blushing violently from the unexpected the praise. 

Phillip also found himself increasingly frequently helping Barnum with the tasks he knew needed doing and ought to do himself but was reluctant to do so. This, usually, was paperwork. There was more of it needed to run a circus than Phillip had expected, and very early on in his time there, he had found himself given a share of it to work on whenever Barnum found he could put it off no longer. Barnum positively hated the work, always seeming to have too much energy to sit still at a desk and write, and he would mutter and whine as he worked through his pile, his pen tapping on the desk as a tiny outlet for his overflowing restless energy. Often, he would sing or hum as he worked, and Phillip found he didn’t mind it quite as much as he thought he would.

Phillip had also noticed that his new boss had an almost unnerving ability to write with either hand, a trait explained by an amused, and apparently left-handed, Barnum to have come from years of being repeatedly corrected to writing with his right hand at school.

Phillip wondered if that explained his soulmate’s lack of a preference too.

Time passed, and the drinking stopped, and Phillip realised he was happy. He wrote so on his arm and received a response in the familiar backwards slanting hand. ‘I’m glad you found your place eventually,’ it said, and he smiled at the words embossed on his skin before buttoning his cuff once again. It was unnecessary now, he knew, but despite the bear arms that surrounded him and the warmth and unjudging acceptance of the entire troupe, Phillip still found he was unable to roll his sleeves.  

Slowly, he grew in his role at the circus, eventually, reluctantly agreeing to performing in shows and becoming more of an equal with P.T., starting to understand the man better, to roll his eyes at his relentless teasing and awful puns, and reason back when he suggested something stupid even by his usual standards. The troupe there became like his family, kind and loving like a family should be, rather than like the one he had grown up in, and somehow, Barnum’s did too.

He did have wife, it turned out, and two young girls, both as full of energy and wonder and excitement as he was. They were marvellous, happy and full of love for each other and their parents and the entire circus troupe and the magical world their father sold to them. P.T.’s wife was remarkable too, she was kind and honest and full of a warmth that she shared not only with her family but with everyone else at the circus too. She adored both her children and her husband and was clearly loved equally as much in return.

Phillip found his heart a little jealous of them all.

It also turned out that, despite what had been ingrained into him from birth, people did not have to be soulmates to fall in love.

P.T. and Charity were not soulmates, as he had discovered a few months into his time at the circus. It was common knowledge amongst the troupe and not something either of them tried to hide, but also not the sort of topic brought up all that frequently simply because there was no reason for it to be. They were very clearly in love though, Phillip could see it in the looks that passed between them and the casual kisses and the way Charity smiled and leant her head into her husband’s shoulder when he put his arm around her.

Phillip had questioned P.T. about it once, curious and comfortable asking the so open man such a normally intimate question and the man had looked to him, his usually vibrant expression thoughtful. He had told Phillip how he had reached the age of 33 before he had heard from his apparently troubled soulmate, how she had struggled with alcohol for much of the past ten years, how he knew very little about her, or who he assumed was a her, because she scarcely sent a replying message to his arm.

He said he had considered stopping his messages, worried he was bothering her as she clearly wanted nothing to do with him, but for some reason, he never could. He explained, his voice heavy, that after the drinking had started, the fading of the messages from his arms were a comfort because at least it meant that she had yet to succumb to the whisky in which she drowned her sorrows almost every night. He had admitted, his voice almost a whisper, that he dreaded there would be a day when the ink would stay stark on the pale skin of his forearm, no soulmate left for the message to be sent to.

Phillip found himself feeling a little sorry for the poor man, and his heart clenched in knowing sympathy for his struggling soulmate.

“She’s doing better now though,” he said, his expression distant, “she seems happier at least.”

Charity, it turned out, had never heard from her soulmate, and the messages she wrote on her arms never faded from her skin. She must have had a soulmate, everyone did, but the permanence of the writing of her arms until she washed if off either suggested her soulmate was yet to be born or had already passed away. As she had left childhood, she had come to accept that it was probably the latter and he had likely died as a young child, and Phillip suddenly understood how they had ended up together. They had been two lonely children, both with blank, messageless arms, no soulmates for them to find.

More time passed and the circus blossomed, and Phillip found he was happier than he ever could have imagined he could be.

And then, one day, everything changed.

The day it had happened had been peaceful and calm, one without a show, and he and P.T. had retreated to their shared office to catch up on the paperwork that had been slowly piling up, Phillip’s in a wire tray on his desk and P.T.’s on the floor amongst the other sheets that lay there. He had been sat at his desk, his hand in his hair as he stared at the taxes he was meant to filling when his heart had stuttered to a stop in his chest.

P.T. had been working busily too, sat across the room and singing absentmindedly under his breath as he wrote, and although the tune of the song flowing quietly from his lips was one Phillip recognised, having heard it hummed before, the words that went with it were new.

And yet, they weren’t. He had heard them before, or _seen_ them before anyway, written in the backwards sloping script that tingled into existence on his right arm and the more upright lettering that appeared on his left. It took him a moment to grasp what was happening, and then a second more to comprehend just how much sense it made.

It all matched up perfectly, he realised, his heart thundering back into life. His soulmate’s past lined up with P.T.’s, with his time on the railroad and his financial troubles and his two daughters and how everything had suddenly sorted itself out when he had opened the circus, and from what little P.T. had said of his own soulmate, he reluctantly admitted that it lined up awfully well with him. The handwriting matched too, he realised, unsure how he hadn’t seen it before, as did the odd ambidextrous writing style, and the casual little snippets of P.T.’s life he had received on his arm made so much more sense when he thought of what had been said in the context of the circus. How he hadn’t noticed before, he had no idea.

It took him another second after that to realise the cruelty of the whole situation. P. T. was married, for a start, he had a family, one that Phillip did not want to be responsible for breaking up. He was his boss too, technically, and his friend and there was something special in the relationship he had forged with the man he didn’t want to change for risk of ruining it entirely. He was happy at the circus, finally, after so many years, and although he was desperate to know if the man sitting across the room from him was really the one who had been writing on his arm for all these years, he was also not sure he was willing to jeopardize what he already had.

His head fought his heart, and in the end, his heart won.

He took a pen from his desk and fumbled the button on the cuff of his shirt open and pushed the sleeve up to reveal his inky forearm below. He paused, unsure and conflicted but desperate to know, and then, with shaking hands, wrote onto the pale skin. He watched as the words faded from view, shivering at the tingling sensation.

A second passed, and the singing stopped, and then, a frown on his lips, P.T. looked down at his arm and the words that had just appeared there.

“A million dreams is all its gonna take,” he read to himself, his voice a whisper. He looked confused, his eyebrows furrowed, as he puzzled out the sudden appearance of the words he had been singing on his arm, and then, just as it had for Phillip minutes before, realisation had struck. His head shot up fast enough that Phillip was sure he would have given himself whiplash, his expression one of shock and confusion and awe.

“Phillip?” he breathed, his voice trembling and his eyes wide, and then, before Phillip could work out what to reply, the man had looked back to his arms and scribbled on the skin on the top of his right forearm.

A second later, the pleasant tingling sensation that signified the arrival of a message struck on the back of Phillip’s right arm, and with shaking hands, he unbuttoned his second cuff and pushed the sleeve up in search of the words that P.T., his soulmate, had written there.

‘It’s you?’ The words were there in the achingly familiar backwards sloping cursive and he exhaled shakily, the noise almost a sob, and then looked back up at the overwhelmed man sitting at the desk just across from his.

“Yes,” he said, his voice a mess, and then Phineas stood, the force enough to tip his chair and send it clattering to the floor, and crossed the room. Phillip stood too, meeting him just beside his desk. His legs trembled as though he had just run a race, and the heart throbbing in his throat just the same.

Phineas looked at him, his eyes wide and teary and elated, and then reached down and gently took Phillip’s right arm in his hand. He lifted it until it was held between them, and then, so gently Phillip could barely feel it, he ran his fingers over the words inked on the skin in his own sloped handwriting.

“Well, this complicates things,” he said, his voice thick, and Phillip choked out a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh and looked up into the overly bright eyes of his soulmate.

More time passed, as time tends to do. Things had been complicated for a while, just as Phineas had said they would be, but eventually, they had kind of sorted themselves out.

Phineas stayed loving Charity, how could he stop, but it turned out she had been more than willing to share her husband with the man he was meant to be with. It had been Phillip who had resisted to the change in their living arrangements, not wanting to be the reason Charity ended up alone, and Caroline and Helen became children of a broken home.

But in the end, Charity had stayed too, at both Phineas’ and Phillip’s insistence, and all five of them had ended up living together in the grand house in the countryside that Phineas and Charity had played in as lonely, soulmateless children all those years ago.

Other things had changed too, Phillip knew, as he sat at the desk in the office of their house, his head propped up on his hand as he thought of how much his life had changed in the few short years since he had joined the circus. He was happy now, happier than he had ever been before and happier than he had ever thought he could be, and although their complicated relationship was difficult at times, and Phillip could tell  Phineas was torn between the woman he loved and who he had married and his soulmate, the man he had fallen in love with too, they somehow made it work.

“Phillip,” called a voice from downstairs, “Please can you remind Phin to buy potatoes, you know how ditsy he can be. I don’t want a repeat of yesterday’s dinner.”

Phillip, pulled from his thoughts by her shout, chuckled at the mention of the failed dinner they had eaten of the night before after Phineas had forgotten the beef component of their roast beef, and sighed good naturedly.

“I’m not your messenger!” he called back, rolling his eyes when she laughed a ‘on your head be it, then’ in response.

He did as she had asked, though, and took a pen from the pot on his desk and uncapped the lid, and then, on the already exposed skin of his left forearm he wrote in his carefully printed letters a message.

‘Charity says don’t forget potatoes,’ it said, and he paused, his head tilted to the side and a smile on his lips before writing three more words beneath the others. He watched as they faded, finally enjoying the once unfamiliar sensation as the message was sent. He waited, knowing the response wouldn’t take long. It arrived on his right arm with a tingle that sent his heart swirling.

'I love you too’ the message said, and he smiled, happy and content and loved, at the beautiful backwards slanting script of his soulmate.


	18. Outcast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline had wanted to be a ballerina for as long as she could remember. It sounded cliched, she knew, but it was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 17, apologies for any typos. Enjoy

Caroline had wanted to be a ballerina for as long as she could remember. It sounded cliched, she knew, but it was true. She had seen them on posters and read of them in books, and she had talked about them with friends at school, the group of them playing at a few steps together during their lunch breaks, but she had never had the opportunity to learn the dance herself.

Her parents always changed the subject when she asked, they never admitted she couldn’t because they scarcely had enough money to keep a roof over their heads and food on their plates, or most of them anyway, her father often wasn’t hungry, but she knew it was the reason all the same. It didn’t stop her from hoping though, and wishing on her father’s wishing machine, that one day she would get a change to dance upon a stage, flying gracefully in a feather-light, beautiful dress, to have a pair of ballet slippers of her own.

Then one day, her wish came true, and as she stood in the entrance hall of their new family home, a grand, impressive building with a winding drive and marble floor and more windows than she could count, her father had presented her with a gift. The slippers inside were beautiful and made of pale pink satin with silky ribbons and carefully wrapped in a box with a bow, and most importantly, they were hers.

The lessons at the ballet school just down the road from their house were better than she could ever have imagined. She was behind the other girls, of course, they had started years beforehand, but she found, very quickly, that she had a talent for dancing. She progressed through the stages swiftly, faster than they ever thought she could, and soon, she was able to leap and spin and fly on her toes just as well, if not better, than the other girls her age.

She loved ballet, just as she knew she would. It was unbelievably freeing, just her and the music and the dance, and it felt like flying, almost weightless and graceful as though she were a bird alone in the sky, swooping above the rest of the world, her thoughts and worries lost in the moment.  

What she had also discovered though, was that she wasn’t nearly as good at fitting in with the girls she learnt with as she was at the ballet itself. They had been kind at first, in a stuck up, cliquey kind of way, and although she had been an outsider to their group, they at least seemed to be giving her a chance to prove herself. It hadn’t taken long, though, for them to realise who she was, and more importantly, who her father was.  

Status was more important than money in the upper-class world into which the girls at the ballet school were born, and although Caroline’s parents now had wealth and fame and a large, excessive home, they had come from nothing, and for that, she was little more than dirt to them. How they had made their money didn’t help either, if her father had earnt his riches at business, at something, anything, more respectable than his wonderful circus, she might have just about been okay.

And yet, he hadn’t, and therefore, she wasn’t.

There was a handful girls that lead the turn against her, and like girls of that age tend to, the rest had followed in their footsteps, in search of popularity and inclusion and out of a fear of becoming an outcast themselves. Soon she was less than nothing to any of them, just an outsider dragged into their well to-do-world by the money raised from the degrading circus so enjoyed by the poor, and by the time her background had been out in the open a few weeks, many of the girls only spoke to her to sneer and taunt. ‘Peanuts’ they’d call her on the odd occasion they had anything to say, and then they would laugh and leave in the clique that included everyone but her. She was alone in the world she loved, an outcast, and there was only so long she could bear it before her heart was aching and broken and she had lost all hope of ever fitting in.

Eventually, she realised there was only one solution.

“I’m quitting,” she had told her father as they walked away from the theatre, interrupting his gushing praises of her dancing, and she had meant it, broken down by the relentless teasing of the other girls. He had protested her argument of starting too late, any father would, but she knew he was actually right; she was the best one there, there was a reason she danced in the middle. It probably didn’t help her reputation with the other girls either, the ones who thought they were much more worthy of the prime position than she was.

But then instead of agreeing with her father, she had turned to her father and scoffed.

“It’s not like the circus,” she had sneered, her heart hurting and her emotions wild. “You can’t just fake it.” The words had been harsh and bitter and said to wound, just as those spoken by the girls in her class, and she had regretted them the moment they had left her lips. He had been upset, his eyes widening in hurt and his expression falling, although more likely at how what had been said had been spoken and by whom than the words themselves. She had turned away, guilt heavy in her aching heart, and climbed into the waiting carriage, leaving him confused and hurt and alone.

She had never apologised, she hadn’t the courage, but he didn’t have the heart to hold it against her and given her a hug and goodnight kiss on her forehead as he always did when he tucked her into bed that night. Somehow, that had made it worse. She had cried that night, upset for herself, an outcast at the lessons she should have loved but didn’t and hadn’t been allowed to stop, and for her father, who she had intentionally hurt, as horrid as the girls who teased her, but who loved her unconditionally all the same.

A few weeks later, when he found her crying in her room after a class, hiding from the world under her duvet, he had pulled her onto his lap and rocked her as she sobbed, and had finally agreed to allow her to quit.

It was months later, only after she watched Jenny Lind, the woman who her father had brought back from England and who was an outcast herself, sing, that she had returned to ballet and to the girls who still teased her, because it turned out that doing what you loved, and what made you happy, was much more important than being accepted by a group of childish, small-minded swells. She was still an outcast, and she knew she probably always would be, and although their words and sneers still hurt, she knew she was bigger than them, and so she danced the ballet, flying across the stage, just as she had always wished she could.  


	19. Child(ren)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days, Barnum would catch them, and take them gently to the floor, rolling with them on the ground despite their dresses and his scarf and waistcoat, and allowing them to pin him to the floor as though conquered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 18? I think? This one's shorter than normal and maybe a little rushed, I might come back to it, who knows? 
> 
> Enjoy

Phillip learnt very early on in his time at the circus that there was surprisingly little Barnum did that wasn’t for his family. He had started the circus for them, with the hope of earning enough money that he could afford the rent of the small apartment they had been living in and provide Charity with sufficient funds to put a healthy amount of food on their table. He had hired Phillip in the hope he could help earn the respect of the upper classes just because he had watched his eldest daughter teased relentlessly by their children because his wealth was earnt through the degrading show loved by the poor. He had wanted the world for them, and, somehow, he was getting it.

That Barnum loved his children, and his wife too, was clear in his overwhelming desire to do everything he could to make them happy and healthy and allow them to grow up in a world so much better than the one in which he had, one where they wouldn’t be scoffed at and snubbed and treated like dirt. But his love for them was also very, very obvious in his open, relaxed, and sometimes silly style of parenting. He would laugh with them when they were happy and tease them wildly when they were in the mood and amuse their imaginations with vivid stories of magic and wonder and mysterious other worlds that Phillip could only dream of creating. He was sensitive with them too though, holding them when they cried and telling them that everything would be okay as he rubbed comforting circles into the backs.

He played with them too, not afraid to be caught acting daft for their amusement or swing them around by their hands until they were both squealing with delight and ever so slightly nauseous or chase them, roaring and snarling, as he ran, and they would scream as they scuttled away, their eyes alight with excitement. Some days, he would catch them, and take them gently to the floor, rolling with them on the ground despite their dresses and his scarf and waistcoat, and allowing them to pin him down as though conquered.

Today was one of those days, and Phillip watched as they played on the sandy circle in the centre of the circus, almost unnerved by the wild, carefree energy of their game, such a contrast to his own amusements when he were there age, and feeling just a little jealous of the two girls’ childhood, of the love and care they received their kind-hearted mother and their playful yet utterly devoted father.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Phillip startled round at the sound of the soft voice beside him. It was Barnum’s wife who was there, Carity, he mentally corrected himself, standing at the end of the bench he was sitting at to watch the game playing out in the dimly lit ring of the circus. She looked amused, her blue eyes crinkled lightly and a smile playing gently on her lips.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said, her tone amused too, “You looked miles away though.”

“Oh, erm, I was just watching them play,” he explained, and felt a flush burn into his cheeks the moment the words had left his lips. “It sounds a little creepy put like that.”

Charity laughed lightly and then, after a pause, sat down beside him and looked thoughtfully over at her family. Barnum was laying on his back on the sand, the two girls leaning over him, their weight over his chest and arms as though to hold him down. He was struggling against their grip, or pretending to anyway, legs flailing wildly and hands clawing at the air as he growled and laughed. Occasionally, his shoulders would rise from the floor, and both girls would screech excitedly as they put more weight into their hold and he would fall back to the floor in mock defeat.

After a few failed attempts at pushing them off, he sat up properly with a roar that sent them to hysterics as they tumbled from his chest and ended sprawled beside him on the floor. He stopped once he was sat, his hands poised and ready, the tension building as he looked between them with glinting eyes. Both girls were stilled too, their expressions alight and eager but their laughter held in anticipation as they waited to see what he would do.

He pounced, too suddenly for of them could react, and then Helen was on her back on the sand, laughing hysterically as her father tickled her sides. Caroline leapt to her assistance, jumping onto his back, her arms around his neck. He shook himself violently, as though to throw her off, and then, when he had no success, he stood, taking her with him so she dangled from his shoulders. She squealed as she was taken into the air, and then yelled again as he turned on the spot, spinning her with him until she dropped, landing hard enough that she fell over onto the sand below.

Barnum looked briefly concerned before his eyes widened in mock surprised as both girls jumped from the floor and took chase again. They lapped the ring three dizzying times, him always just barely out of their reach, before he stopped and turned to face them, his hands up in mock surrender to the two laughing, ecstatic, sand covered girls before him.

“Please, no more, I concede,” he gasped in between his own chuckles, a beaming smile on his lips and his eyes crinkled in amusement enough to wrinkle the skin beside them. He looked a mess; his shirt untucked and caught awkwardly in his braces and one of his rolled-up sleeves pushed above his elbow and the other half unrolled and down his mid forearm. His hair was an unruly mop, the sand caught in it stark against his dark waves, and as they watched, he bent down to the height of the girls before him and shook his head to loosen it, sending it flying from his scalp in all directions. Both girls squealed again, turning their faces away from the grainy assault and he took the moment to catch his breath, hands on his knees as he breathed.

As though finally sensing he had an audience, he looked up at his two spectators and laughed again before the sound as cut short as Helen collided with his side, too distracted to notice her running before she hit, and sent him stumbling theatrically back to the floor. Both girls cheered and jumped on him and then they were rolling in the sand once again. They looked happy and carefree and all three of them were laughing wildly as they wrestled.

“He’s a great father,” Charity said as she watched, her eyes not leaving the trio playing below them in the ring.

“Yes, he is,” Phillip agreed, an amused smile on his lips, because whether you believed Barnum was an honest businessman growing a circus he loved or a fraud and a conman in it for the wealth, there was no doubting that he was a truly devoted father to the two young girls he was playing with.


	20. Ambition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t learn to fly without falling a few times first,” Phineas said simply and surely, his tone amused. 
> 
> Phillip sighed in exasperation at his true, yet daft, comment. 
> 
> “Yes, but maybe you should keep the flying and falls a little less literal from now on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 19, a bit late, but oh well! I'm posting this at work, chemistry is clearly going well!

“I told you learning the lyra at your age was a little ambitious,” Phillip quipped as he escorted his embarrassed and slightly dizzy partner into their office. He had one hand on his back, more to keep him moving than for support, pressed against warm skin through the thin, rumpled cotton of his shirt.

“Ambition is good, you don’t know what you can succeed at unless you try.”

“Hmm, indeed. But what you need to understand is that there is a difference between ambition and stupidity, and I think that just about crossed the boundary between the two.”

Phineas glanced back at him, a teasing grin on his lips and one eyebrow raised.

“You can’t learn to fly without falling a few times first,” he said simply and surely, his tone amused.

Phillip sighed in exasperation at his true, yet daft, comment.

“Yes, but maybe you should keep the flying and falls a little less literal from now on. Your skull will certainly appreciate it.”

Phineas glared at the suggestion.

“But think of the entrance I could make,” he protested, turning to face him fully, his expression keen and wistful and his eyes bright as they always were but a little annoyed, likely at Phillip for cutting short his practice session when he considered himself fine. They looked a little unfocused too, although Phillip wasn’t all that surprised, and his balance faltered for a second before he gently steadied him. He didn’t seem fazed by his wobble and continued his objection regardless. “Think of the tension as I start the show by singing from the darkened rafters!”

“What, before falling from the hoop to your sandy death below? I’m sure the crowds will love watching that!”

Phineas rolled his eyes and then looked to regret it and rubbed at his aching head. 

“I just need more practice.”

Phillip raised his eyebrows dubiously and then gave his partner a gentle push in the direction of the battered, red sofa.

“No, I forbid more lyra practice,” he reasoned fondly, feeling he should be a little more surprised than he was at his partner’s daft lack of self-preservation. “And don’t bother asking Anne to help you either, she’s not going to give you another go any time soon after _that_ failure.”

Phineas’ eyes widened, his expression hurt.

“I’m offended you consider my finest attempt at the lyra a failure,” he said actually sounding a little insulted by the comment. “You looked to be quite impressed to begin with.”

“You know full well that was a failure, Phineas, especially the dismount,” he scoffed, amused by his partner’s mostly insincere offence. “You’re very lucky you didn’t end up seriously injuring yourself. Now, sit.”

He motioned for the sofa and Phineas, perhaps a little begrudgingly, did.

“Right, I’m going to get you some ice. Don’t get up, I know you’re dizzy, and I do not want to have to clean your blood from the corner of my desk when you fall and split your head for a second time in as many months. Okay?”

“If you so insist,” the man on the sofa agreed reluctantly, “But I really am fine, you know.”

Phillip sighed and sent him an exasperated glare as he left the room and headed towards the ice box they stored in the kitchen.

Somewhat surprisingly, Phineas was still sat on the sofa when he returned with an ice filled cloth in his hand. His was leaning against the arm of the sofa, his bravado waning as the adrenaline surge dropped away. His posture was a little more deflated than it had been before, his head propped up by a hand fisted into his dark, lightly curling hair. He looked up at the sound of Phillip’s footsteps, his eyes more pinched than they had been when he’d left and his expression almost miserable.

“Is your headache worse?” Phillip asked as he passed him the ice.

“A little.” He took the cold cloth gratefully and held it to the impressive, egg sized knot on the side of his scalp, looking a little relieved at the numbing coolness of it against his sore skull. It was no wonder his head was hurting, though, after such an impressive tumble from the lyra.

The ring hadn’t been that far from the ground, little over two and a half meters, just high enough for him to hang from the bottom of it without his feet touching the floor, but it was still quite a height to fall from. Phillip hadn’t quite seen how he’d managed it, one second, he had been up on top of the ring, his posture atrocious compared to Anne’s usual elegance but impressive all the same and his expression alight and beaming, but then, he must have tried to do _something_ because the next, with a surprised yelp, he was falling.

He hadn’t landed particularly well either, hitting the floor head fist with a thud and crumpling into a heap on the sand below the hoop. He hadn’t cried out as he’d landed, the flump as his weight as he hit the floor the only audible tell of his landing, and afterwards he had lay there, silent and motionless and apparently unconscious, and Phillip, heart throbbing in his throat, had rushed to him and gently turned shaken him until he stirred. It hadn’t taken long, and he had woken woozy and shaken but aware of what had happened, and then sat up of his own accord, seemingly physically fine except an egg sized bump on his head where it had taken the brunt of the fall. Phillip had checked there and then he was okay, feeling him limbs for unmissed sores and running his fingers through his hair, unable to believe the man could fall so badly and yet be almost entirely unharmed, but it had turned out he really had miraculously escaped his impressive tumble with little more than some dizziness and a headache.

Phineas winced, at what, Phillip didn’t quite know, and he smiled sadly at his hurting partner still sat on the sofa, the ice held to the knot on his aching head melting through the cloth and soaking into his hair, and then sighed and sat down beside him.

“Come here,” he said softly, holding an arm out, and Phineas looked over, a little confused, and then upon realising what he was suggesting, leant against him and rested his head on his partner’s shoulder. Phillip’s arm ended up around his waist and he gave it a light squeeze.

“Are you okay, really?” he asked, resting his head on the uninjured side of his partners. “That was quite a fall.”

Phineas hummed in confirmation and nodded into his shoulder. “Just a little bruised.”

“Well, that probably serves you right.” Phillip turned his head to press a kiss into his dark and slightly sandy waves. A rouge curl tickled lightly against his cheek.  “You are daft, you know, but I’m pleased you’re okay.”

Phineas hummed in appreciation and then, after a moment, sighed thoughtfully.

“You should be pleased I’m ambitious too,” he muttered, his voice soft and low and the comment seeming almost out of the blue before Phillip remembered what he had said to the man as they’d entered the office. “I wouldn’t have started the circus if I wasn’t, and then I would never have hired you if I hadn’t been determined to find my worth amongst the swells. Not that that turned out overly well, I’m not sure Charity ever truly forgave me, but it did lead me to you.”

“That… is very true.”

“So, really,” he continued, glancing up at his partner, his still slightly unfocused eyes glinting and a playful smile on his lips. “You’re quite lucky I’m ambitious, otherwise we wouldn’t have met, and you wouldn’t have such an amazing partner.”

Phillip sighed fondly, a smile playing on his own lips at his partners overly confident words. It was true though, he knew.

“So, you’re saying I should be glad you’re your ambitious, arrogant, stubborn self, even if that does mean you often need saving from your own stupidity?”

Phineas glared a little at that and appeared not to know what to say in response, apparently not quite up to his usual level when it came to quick remarks. Phillip huffed in amusement at his petulant expression and gave the waist his arm was wrapped around a squeeze.  

“I love you really, even if you are quite an effort to keep alive at times,” he chuckled lightly, and Phineas exhaled a little in apparent relief before he leant his aching head back on his partner’s shoulder.

“I love you too,” he mumbled against his shoulder and Phillip smiled, his heart swimming happily, and leant his own head back on top of his partner’s messy hair, enjoying the solid warmth of the man he loved beside him.


	21. Only One Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ll be fine,” Phillip argued lightly, his voice thick with the cold he was nursing, and rolled his eyes at his partner’s concern. “I don’t actually feel too bad.” 
> 
> Phineas cast him a sceptical look from the sofa where he had stayed. “That’s nonsense if I ever heard it, you’ve clearly got a headache, you’ve been rubbing at your eyes all day. Besides, have you heard your voice, you do realise the show involves singing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 20, near enough on the 20th! 
> 
> Enjoy!

“Phil, I said I’d take your show tonight,” Phineas sighed as Phillip climbed lethargically to his feet, taking the blanket his was curled up in with him. He shivered once he was up, already missing the cosy nest he had been curled up in with his partner for most of the day.

“I’ll be fine,” he argued lightly, his voice thick with the cold he was nursing, and rolled his eyes at his partner’s concern. “I don’t actually feel too bad.”

Phineas cast him a sceptical look from the sofa where he had stayed. “That’s nonsense if I ever heard it, you’ve clearly got a headache, you’ve been rubbing at your eyes all day. Besides, have you heard your voice, you do realise the show involves singing?”

Phillip laughed at that, the noise much deeper than is usually was, and had to admit his partner did have a bit of a point there.

“I’ll just sing your version.” He flapped a hand dismissively, the blanket draped around his shoulders shaking a little as the hand that held it moved, and then sniffled. “I can go deep enough now, bring the same tension to the opening.”

It was Phineas’ turn to roll his eyes. “You still have to be able to hold a note to sing my version you know.”

Phillip raised his eyebrows in mock offence.

“Are you insulting my singing?” he demanded, grinning despite the sinus headache he was indeed suffering from. “Because you know full well, I can hold a tune much better than you!”

Phineas sighed and cast him a disapproving look. “Stop trying to change the subject, Phillip. You can’t perform whilst ill, it’s daft.”

He laughed again at that, his eyebrows shooting towards his hairline. “You are a hypocrite! I’ve lost count of how many times you’ve done just that.”

The man on the sofa raised an eyebrow too and crossed one long leg over the other.

“I don’t get ill,” he said nonchalantly. “I have an effective immune system.”

Phillip hummed at the nonsense coming from his partner’s lips and then sneezed messily.

“Ugh,” he groaned, as he extracted his handkerchief from his pocket and sniffled into it, rubbing it against his sore, red nose. “Okay, I concede, you can perform tonight. I doubt the crowds would be overly pleased about paying to hear me sneeze my way through the songs anyway.”  

Phineas grinned, in relief or excitement or victory Phillip wasn’t quite sure, and jumped up from the sofa. “Finally you have seen sense!” he exclaimed, and then motioned for his partner to retake his seat on the sofa. Phillip rolled his eyes but then sat, allowing his partner to tuck him back into his blanket.

“Stay there,” he commanded gently, his eyes softly warning, and then wandered from the room.

Phillip leant back into the cushions, resting his aching head on the arm of the sofa. He had to admit, an evening dozing on the sofa in the warmth with an easy book in his hand did sound much more pleasant than running around on the bright, noisy stage attempting to force a song from his congested throat. It wouldn’t be quite as nice as his afternoon though, not without the man he had spent most of it curled against, his larger hand rubbing soothingly through his mussed hair.

When Phineas returned, dressed ready for his journey to the circus in his coat and hat, he was balancing a tray with a large mug of lemon and honey tea and a few biscuits in one hand and carrying Phillip’s pillow and the book from his bedside table in the other.

“I know there’s no point asking you to go to bed before I’m home, but try and get some rest down here, okay?”

Phillip nodded and gratefully accepted the offered mug of tea. He sat up and took a sip, humming as it soothed his throat a little whilst his partner arranged his pillow on the arm of the sofa and placed the book and biscuits on the coffee table.

“Thank you, Phin,” he sniffled, leaning back into the pillow, suddenly exhausted, the mug still held in his hands. Phineas took it from him, relocating it to the safety of the coffee table, and then covered him with the soft blanket.

“You’re welcome,” he said and pressed a kiss to his sweaty brow. “Now, get some rest.”

Phillip nodded into his pillow and closed his eyes. “I love you,” he mumbled sleepily, and then smiled at the matching response.

He was asleep before Phineas had even left the room.   

 

Phillip startled awake to the feeling of being shaken. He panicked, confused and unable to work out what was happening though his fevered brain, and bolted upright, only missing colliding his head against the one leaning over him due to the other man’s quick reactions.

“Phil, it’s just me!” he exclaimed, putting a hand gently on his shoulder. Phillip flinched away, but then, realising it was in fact Phineas beside him, relaxed. He sighed shakily and rubbed at his gritty eyes with trembling hands, realising he somehow felt worse than before his nap. It took him a moment to realise he had been asleep the entire time his partner had been out.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve been, erm, dreaming, I guess.”

“Fever dreams?” Phineas asked, concerned, and then put the back of his hand to his forehead, gauging the temperature of his skin. He leant into the pleasantly cool skin, relishing in its relief against his throbbing headache.

“Hmm, they’re not as pleasant as your songs make out.”

“Well, no, just as vivid though, was the point,” his partner explained distractedly. “You don’t feel _too_ feverish, at least. Come on--” he pulled at the blankets, unswaddling his ill partner from his nest, “--to bed with you, sleep is what you need.”

Phillip held on to the blankets and shook his head. “Look, maybe I should sleep down here tonight, I’d stay in the guest room if we had one, but the sofa will be okay.”

Phineas frowned, his expression part confusion, part concern. “Have I done something wrong?”

“What, no!” Phillip exclaimed, shaking his head hard enough in protest that his sore brain felt to rattle in his skull. “I just don’t want to make you ill too.”

Phineas’ expression drooped in relief and he sighed and then huffed in amusement. “You’re just being ridiculous, you’re not sleeping here, neither of us are, we have a bed made for two and we’ll use it whether you’re ill or not.”

“But what if I do make you ill?” Phillip worried aloud but allowed himself to be unwrapped from his blankets and pulled from the sofa. He stumbled once up, his head swimming, and he probably would have fallen if not for the arm that wrapped itself around his waist.

“You won’t, don’t worry, I have an immune system of steel. One benefit of living on the streets, if only briefly.”

Phillip hummed and leant his head onto his partner’s shoulder. “If you say so,” he sighed, too tired to argue further despite the nonsense his partner was spouting.

 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Phillip asked, frowning lightly, as he hovered reluctantly by his side of the bed. He was ready to sleep, both in terms of his exhaustion and his pyjamaed state of dress, but the worry of making his partner ill too was still heavy in his gut.

Phineas rolled his eyes, sighing in fond frustration. “For the third time, yes, Phillip. Now lay down before you fall down.”

Phillip huffed but then after a pause, gave into his partner and his tired body and climbed under the sheets. They were blissfully cold and soft against his aching limbs and he hummed, in appreciation, before letting out a sigh as the light behind his closed eyelids dimmed. The bed beside him dipped and then he felt another person roll up to him, their arms looping around his back.

“Phin?” He opened his eyes, frowning in the dark, barely able to make out the features of his partner despite their faces being only inches apart.

“If I’m destined to catch your cold, I probably will whether we try and prevent it or not,” Phineas said and Phillip, realising the surprisingly logical honesty of his partner, sighed and then rolled over and curled into his partner’s side, relinquishing in his coolness against his fevered skin. He would feel too cold again shortly, he knew, but for now, he was comfortable.

“Night Phin, love you,” he muttered into his partner’s shoulder.  

“Sleep well, I love you too,” his partner replied softly, and Phillip hummed contently in response and leant his head into his bare shoulder. Phineas’ arms tightened around him comfortably, one of his hands snaking up behind him to cradle his head.

That night, Phillip, ill and achy as he was, was lulled to sleep by a hand, large and rough from years of manual work, carding softly through his hair.

 

Three days later, just as Phillip’s cold was passing, he was awoken by a violent sneeze, and not one his own. He blinked his eyes open, squinting in the early morning sun creeping around the curtains, to see his partner sat up in the bed beside him, his eyes red and watery and his handkerchief held to his nose. His skin was flushed with a low fever, just as Phillip’s had been.

“I thought you didn’t get ill?” he asked innocently, “Immune system of steel, I seem to recall.”

Phineas looked down at him, startling a little, and then sighed. “Well, maybe I might have overestimated its abilities, a little,” he admitted, his voice thick with congestion.

Phillip hummed in amusement. “Phineas Taylor Barnum overestimating himself? That’s unheard of!” he teased lightly, a soft smile on his lips and one eyebrow raised.

Phineas frowned and sent him a half-hearted glare but said nothing, apparently lacking the energy and brainpower to muster his usual lightning fast counter. He coughed deeply instead, the noise worryingly chesty, and then sniffled again, looking every bit as miserable as he sounded.

Phillip’s heart clenched in his chest.

“Come here,” he commanded softly and lifted the covers, motioning for his patner to lay back down, and then pulled the ill man towards him when he did so. Phineas leant his unnaturally warm head against his shoulder, likely seeking the coolness of his skin just as Phillip himself had been doing a few days before. He sighed sadly, the illness of his partner somehow hurting more than his own, and lifted a hand to his hair, gently teasing his fingers though the sweaty curls. Phineas hummed appreciatively and pushed his head into the touch.

“Get some more sleep, Phin,” Phillip muttered to him gently, and felt his warm head nod once against his chest. Gradually, Phineas’ snuffly breathing evened and slowed as he drifted back to sleep, soothed by the hand in his hair just as he had soothed his partner days before.


	22. Solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phineas Taylor Barnum couldn’t remember a worse moment than when he had been left alone in the darkened and empty hallway of his home, that morning’s paper clutched loosely between his sooty fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 21! I hope this makes sense, I'm v. tired? 
> 
> Not my best work, but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Phineas Taylor Barnum couldn’t remember a worse moment than when he had been left alone in the darkened and empty hallway of his home, that morning’s paper clutched loosely between his sooty fingers.

Upon reading the title, the words ‘Barnum Scandal’ printed bold and unmissable and heartbreakingly wrong on the front page of that awful paper, he had hurried home from the charred remains of his circus because despite the fire and his now homeless troop and _Philip_ and the massive debt he had dropped himself into, nothing was more important than reaching his wife, the woman he loved, and explaining the kiss between him and Jenny, depicted in _that_ drawing, meant less than nothing.

The rush had been for nothing too, it turned out, because although he had returned home just in time to catch his wonderful wife as she descended their stairs once last time, just in time to explain, she had left him anyway, closing the door behind her without so much as a goodbye. He had thought she would be upset, but instead she was angry, her voice strong and her eyes dry. It hadn’t even been the kiss that had angered her. He had got that wrong too.

It had taken a second for it all to sink in, a type of shock, he supposed, so at first, he had just stood there, alone and dirty and homeless once again, and then it had hit him like a train, the stupidity of what he had done, and his heart had broken in his chest.

He had come from nothing, or almost nothing, he had been an orphan, homeless and hungry and alone with very little hope, but he had had dreams and someone to share them with even if just through pen and paper. And then he had gained a job and little money and then a wife he loved with all his heart and who loved him and a home and a family and then the circus. But with the circus came fame and money and it ignited the burning desire that had always been within him to prove himself, to prove he was worthy of his wife, to provide for his daughters, to show Charity’s father and all the other swells that he wasn’t just the tailor’s boy, a nobody.

And so it turned out that Charity was right, as she had been all along, because he was never happy with what he had, with _who_ he had, the more he had had the more he had wanted, until suddenly, so very suddenly, it had all gone wrong and he had been left with nothing, and nobody, at all. He was once again homeless and dirty and alone, but now his vibrant dreams were over and the girl he had once shared them with was gone.     

He sank to the floor, his legs no longer willing to put in the effort to stand, hitting the ground hard enough that he imagined his knees would be hurting if not all he could feel was the empty ache in his chest. It was a phantom pain, he knew, or most of it was anyway, an agonizing hole left by everything and everyone he had lost that day, and the knowledge of the loss he had caused for the ones he loved too.

Charity and Caroline and Helen had lost their home and the life he had worked so hard to provide them with, and he realised, with another heartbreak, that his girls may have lost their father in the same way that he may have lost his wife. The circus troop had lost their home too, as well as their income and Philip had lost the circus he had given up his family and fortune for.

Phillip was, as far as he knew, still unconscious, knocked out by a falling beam, his breathing still wheezy and laboured from inhaling the smoke he had made no effort to protect himself from. He could have died in that building and although the fire wasn’t directly his fault, Phineas knew he was accountable for that too because he shouldn’t have left young Philip with the responsibility of being the ringmaster, of running the circus, of defending the troop from ever angering protestors.

He ought to apologise, to Charity and Caroline and Helen and Lettie and Charles and Anne and the rest of the troop and Philip, but there is only so much ‘sorry’ can fix, and the mess he had made was much, much too big to be solved by an apology. Especially, he realised as Philip crossed his mind, when the person in question may not ever wake to hear it.

Before Phineas really knew what was happening a sob erupted from his throat and tears, wet and ugly and stained black with soot, brewed and then overflowed and pathed a trail down his filthy cheeks, and for a while, he couldn’t even find the strength to wipe them away and they fell, leaving little dark circles on his once white shirt.

Time passed as time tends to do and eventually the sobbing passed too, Phineas’ anger at himself lost in exhaustion and instead the tears fell silently because although the anger had gone, the grief remained.

 

It was the front door opening that startled him from his thoughts and he looked up, his heart hopeful, only to find a suited man in a bowler hat standing in his doorway. The man looks startled too, and possibly a little uncomfortable at finding a grown man sooty and tearstained on the cold marble floor of his empty hallway. His mouth opened a little, and then closed again as though he knew he needed to say something but didn’t quite know where to start.

“I’m, erm, I’m from the bank,” he said, unnecessarily, and then seeming to realise that he was meant to be repossessing the house of a man who had lost the bank a lot of money his expression hardened and he stepped aside, motioning pointedly towards the door.

Phineas swallowed heavily, his showman’s façade gone in his grief and no energy or hope left to fight the man evicting him, and pushed himself from the floor. His legs felt brittle and his head span lightly, but he straightened his spine and wiped the sooty tears from his face with shaking hands. He inhaled deeply, trying to calm his wet, hitching breathing into some sort of rhythm, but the air caught in his scorched lungs and then his breath was stolen once again, this time by smoky coughs that shook his shoulders and sent tendrils of pain through his already aching chest.

“Just give me a minute,” he said, his raspy voice breaking a little, once the coughs had abated, leaving the bitter, charred taste of burning on his tongue, and the man in his doorway sighed, his expression caught between sympathy and irritation and forced severity, before nodding and finally stepping fully into the hall. The large door closed behind him with a bang and the hall was plunged into semi darkness once again.  

 

Phineas ended up in his bedroom, some logical, or possibly illogical, part of his brain deciding he needed to change and wash before he was thrown out onto the streets once again. But once he reached his room he stopped, because the room was bare, their belongings gone, except there, on the empty bed he had shared with his wife, sat an old top hat, battered and greying. It was the same hat he had had since childhood, the one possession from his father he had managed to keep.

It was humbling, in a way, to see that old hat sat on the unclothed mattress in the grand room, and after a pause he crossed the room and sat down beside it, taking its soft, familiar brim in his hands.

He all but collapsed onto the bare bed, the tattered hat held gently, the message it had been left to say looping through his thoughts. Somehow, it had taken the loss of everything for him to realise it wasn’t the money or the grand house or the approval of others that was important, it was the people he had had in his life, his daughters and Philip and the circus troop and his wonderful wife, the woman who had stood beside him despite the hardships and uncertainties they had faced.

Charity didn’t care about the money or their fancy house or their reputation, she never had, she just wanted the boy she fell in love with and the man he had at first grown to become. The man who dreamt a million dreams and shared them with her in the rundown house from their childhood and in a dance on the roof of their grotty apartment and in the stories he would tell their two beautiful girls.  And he had pushed her away. He had pushed them all away.

With a clenched heart, Phineas stood again and wiped a rouge tear from his cheek and then despite wanting to curl up in his bed and hope that he would wake up later beside his wife to find it had all been a dream he forced himself to go to his closet and pick out a change of clothes from the few that still hung there. He made himself to wash and change too, cleaning the evidence from the fire from his face with so much more ease than what solving the mess it, and he, had made of the lives of so many would take.

 

He stopped in Helen and Caroline’s room on the way back to the staircase, taking in the empty beds and missing toys and the shelves bare of books. Helen’s doll house still sat in the corner of the room, too big to take, he supposed, but the wishing machine he had made what felt like a lifetime ago was gone from the table between the two beds. A small part of him smiled at the irony of that; he could have done with a wish.

 

The banker was still in the hall beside the front door when he returned, the sooty newspaper that had been abandoned on the tiles held in his hands. He was reading the front page, Barnum realised numbly.

The man looked up at the sound of his footsteps, his expression a little more impatient and a little less sympathetic than he had before but he forced a polite smile and folded the paper as Barnum reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Quite the mess you’ve made,” he said, an eyebrow raised, and then before Phineas’ aching brain had time to think of a response, the banker had turned and opened the door, letting the frigid autumn air into the hall.

“Well, good day, sir,” he sniffed, and tipped his hat pointedly. His smile looked smug, as though he enjoyed removing people from their homes, and Phineas realised, in this case, he probably did. He guessed it wasn’t every day you got to throw a man who had ruined the lives or so many others onto the street.

Instead of replying, his words still lost and no energy or heart to bother with his usual quick remarks, Phineas huffed and turned away, and then, with one final look around the entrance hall of the place he called home, he returned the old top hat on his head and stepped outside through the open doorway and onto the steps of the grand old house he used to own. He walked away, down the long, treelined drive, the drive he had Charity had ran upon as children, and realised, his heart heavy in his aching chest that the last time he had made his way along it was with Jenny as he left in search of fame and fortune, abandoning everyone who he loved and who loved him. Tears welled in his eyes once again, blurring his vision just as it had been blurred before by an unforgivable need to prove himself.

He had failed, though, and failed everyone else around him too.  

And so, heart breaking and tears falling, Phineas Taylor Barnham, tailor’s boy, orphan, husband, father, and Prince of Humbug walked away from the house he had once owned and the life he used to lead, once again homeless, penniless, and alone.


	23. Retail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phineas brought the box towards the ring, his expression strained with effort, but then, on looking up to see where he was going and spotting Phillip, it brightened into a grin. 
> 
> “Ah, Phillip, perfect timing,” he exclaimed, his voice tight with exertion but sounding worryingly pleased.
> 
> “Why does you saying that sound a little ominous?” Phillip asked cautiously, one eyebrow raised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 22, I think? This is, erm, kind of nonsense, and possibly not even good nonsense, but I hope you enjoy!

Phillip was drawn from his office by the sound of excited chatter. It wasn’t unusual in the circus and he normally wouldn’t have been all that interested by it, usually giving a vague smile at the sound of happiness before continuing with his work, but this time there was something intriguing about how the music of the rehearsal had paused beforehand, cutting off a few seconds after Phineas himself had stopped singing, and so he followed the eager hum of voices to the stage.

He entered the ring to see most of the troupe huddled in loose circle in the centre, clumped as though they had gravitated together when the routine had been cut short, and all staring towards the entrance of the tent. Or, more likely, Phillip realised as he made his way towards them, at Phineas, who was struggling though the doorway, a large, heavy-looking, wooden crate in his arms.

He brought the box towards the ring, his expression strained with effort, but then, on looking up to see where he was going and spotting Phillip, it brightened into a grin.

“Ah, Phillip, perfect timing,” he exclaimed, his voice tight with exertion but sounding worryingly pleased.

“Why does you saying that sound a little ominous?” Phillip asked cautiously, one eyebrow raised.

Phineas’ eyes crinkled in amusement and the troupe chuckled and then dispersed a little, backing away from the centre of the ring and allowing him to stumble in and deposit the box on the floor with a thump that shook the sand and an oddly muted jingle. He shook his arms out once it was down, grimacing a little, and then wiped the wooden splinters from his hands.  

Phillip glanced half curious, half exasperated, between him and the crate. “What nonsense have you bought this time?”

“That’s very rude, Phillip, especially as this is a gift for you.” Phineas raised his eyebrows in mock offence and Phillip found his own furrowing together into a frown as he tried to think what on earth the other man could possibly have bought. It certainly couldn’t be anything remotely sensible, especially considering the impish shine in his eyes.

“Now I am scared. What is it?”

“Do you remember when I suggested you ride the edge of the stage on an elephant with Charles?” He leant sideways against the box, casually propped there by an elbow on the lid, and looked to be enjoying himself. Although, with the attention of the entire circus troupe on him, Phillip wasn’t entirely surprised; the man thrived on awe and attention. “And you declined because the fully-grown elephants were too tall?”

“Yes…” Phillip eyed him cautiously.

“Well!” He raised an eyebrow, a mischievous, lopsided grin on his lips and a glint in his eyes, and then pushed himself away from the box. He looked at it, circling it with a confused frown, before holding up a finger in a sign for them to wait and then darted off towards the backstage entrance. He disappeared behind the curtain, leaving it fluttering in his wake.

Everyone waited, watching for his return, almost silent in anticipation. Phillip found himself a little nervous.  

When he reappeared from backstage he had a crowbar in his hand, and he held it up for them in show as he approached. In the other hand he, a little confusingly, held his ringleader’s coat, which he passed to Lettie as he made his way back to the crate. She took it, frowning in bemusement.

He said nothing when he reached the box but glanced dramatically round at them all, his lips still an excited beam, and forced the crowbar in between the top and the front face of the crate. He leant heavily on the metal and slowly forced the side from the box. The wood fell forwards onto the floor with a clatter, sending the sand skittering from underneath and releasing a tidal wave of sawdust from inside. He coughed lightly, wafting away the cloud that had filled the air, and then, when the dust had settled, beaconed Phillip forwards.

He approached almost cautiously, and then, frowning at the man standing beside the open box, looked inside.

The box was very full, mostly of sawdust, but there was something metal inside it too, red and silver and tubular with what looked to be papery blue tassels and then, intrigued and a little nervous, reached inside and dragged it out.

It came smoothly, on wheels he realised, and then once it was free of the box and the cascade of sawdust that came with it, his frown deepened.

“What… I don’t…” he trailed off, scratching his head at the small, red trike with blue tassels hanging from the handlebars he had removed from the crate.

A confused titter rang through the crowd.

“It’s for you to ride, instead of an elephant,” Phineas explained brightly, as though he thought his purchase made perfectly logical sense. Phillip was 100% sure he knew it did not. “It’s much closer to the floor, you see, so you needn’t worry about falling off.”

Phillip blinked at it, almost lost for words.

“You are daft!” he exclaimed fondly, his tone amused, shaking his head in bemusement at the small tricycle he had been given.

Phineas shrugged nonchalantly and then nodded pointedly at the trike, one eyebrow raised.   

“You should give us a demonstration. I even brought your coat.” He nodded over to Lettie, and then, after a thought, darted to her and fetched the coat himself.

Phillip blinked; he hadn’t even considered that it might not have been his own coat the other man had fetched. He watched as he took the coat and brought it to him, holding it out by the lapels for him to slip into. He stared at it for a moment, considering refusing both the coat and the impromptu show before with an overexaggerated sigh, he shrugged his jacket from his shoulders, leaving it on the lid of the box his present had rolled from.

The troupe cheered, and Phineas’ grin brightened somehow further as he slipped into the silky, red, tailed coat.

He felt a little self-conscious as he took hold of the silver handlebars of the trike and pulled it back towards the edge of the ring, but he persisted despite the amused eyes of the crowd. The trike was obviously too small, but he managed to just about sit without his knees hitting the handlebars, and after a quick glance at his eager audience and the excited man before them, pushed himself across the ring. It wasn’t too bad he found, and he smiled and shook his head lightly as another cheer went up from the troupe.

Phineas’ voice was the loudest of them all. “You’re meant to pedal!” he protested, his words almost lost in chuckles. Phillip sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes, but then, when he reached the other side of the circle, scooted the trike round and started back the way he had come.

He pedalled this time, his knees only just managing to fit behind the handlebars, as he made his slower return across the ring. The troupe whooped and clapped, and he found his insides a little fuzzy at their attention.

“That’s better!” Phineas declared, and he looked over at the laughing eyes of the ridiculous man. Looking to the side turned out to be a mistake though, and he found himself toppling to the side and then pivoting forwards on the one front wheel, falling to the floor and taking the trike with him. At least he didn’t have far to fall.

The crowd roared in laughter, Phineas’ loud and deeper than the rest. He was bent over, his eyes crinkled and shiny with amused tears. Phillip felt his face flush as he pushed himself to his feet, righting the trike as he did so, but then, after a second, he was laughing too, amused by the amusement of the people that surrounded him, and in particular the daft man before him with tears of laughter on his cheeks, who had bought him the frankly ridiculous bike.

Live a little crazy, the man had told him all those years ago, and Phillip realised it certainly was a pretty amazing way to live.


	24. Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Rude! I may be drunk, but I’m not a mess. I am a sophisticated drunk!” Phineas tripped over his words, sophisticated especially emerging as a stumbled mess of syllables. 
> 
> Phillip raised his eyebrows. “What are you trying to say, dear, you’re slurring a little.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 23! I'm not sure how well this one reads, but it amused me to write. 
> 
> Comments are always appreciated, and Enjoy!

“Maybe I should have another go at the lyra,” Phineas suggested brightly from where he was slumped with little balance or coordination against the table they were all sat around. He had spoken suddenly after minutes of staring thoughtfully at the wooden surface whilst absentmindedly feeding himself peanuts, with apparently little thought for the game of cards his statement had interrupted.

The low chatter from around the table stopped, the eyes of Anne, Lettie, O’Malley and Charles turning curiously from their hands to their tipsy ringleader. Phillip glanced at the man beside him too, an eyebrow raised in messy bemusement, and scoffed at the suggestion.

“Ha, no. That is not going to happen.”

Phineas lifted his head from the hand it had been propped upon and looked up to meet him, a pout playing on his lips.

“Why?” The question was genuine and surprised, and he looked a little upset about having been declined another play on the ring. Phillip laughed at his wounded expression.

“Because you and the lyra don’t mix when you’re sober, let alone when you can barely hold yourself up on a chair,” he explained, knowing his own ability to hold his balance was almost as questionable as his partner’s, but at least he wasn’t considering performing aerobatics in his drunken state.  

Phineas looked a little confused, as though he hadn’t understood quite what he was referring to, before a look of enlightenment crossed his eyes and he lifted a hand to rub uncoordinatedly at the bump on the side of his skull that had never quite vanished after his first and only previous attempt.

“I’d improve if you allowed me more practice,” he protested, an eyebrow of his own sloppily raised. He picked a peanut from the table, and then, in what Phillip supposed was meant to be in show, he threw it up into the air and tilted his head back to catch it in his mouth. The peanut missed though, his aim entirely off, landing with a light clatter on top of the cards lined up in the centre of the table. He flopped his head back down at the sound and glared at it disapprovingly, as though his failed attempt at impressing his company was down to the nut rather than his uncoordinated limbs.

Phillip raised his eyebrows pointedly. “If I allowed you more practice you’d probably end up breaking your neck.”

“I’m almost surprised you didn’t last time to be honest, that was quite the fall,” added Anne, frowning at the memory of the proud ringleader toppling from her hoop and landing head first on the sand of the ring bellow.

Phineas shrugged nonchalantly.

“You can’t learn to fall without taking a few falls first,” he said pointedly, and then raised his tumbler and swallowed the last gulp of his whisky. He grimaced a little as it burnt its way down his throat.

Lettie laughed, the sound light and airy and honest with alcohol. “I think you might have said that a little wrong, Mr Barnum,” she chuckled, and Phillip frowned, trying to work out what she was referring to before he realised the mistake his partner had said. He laughed aloud, joining Lettie, before the amusement of Anne and Charles joined in too.

Phineas looked puzzled, his miswording lost on him, but then added his deep chuckles to the din, more swept along by both the alcohol and infectious laughter of the others than understanding what they were actually laughing it.

O’Malley rolled his eyes at the lot of them, playing with the deck of cards he held until they had settled, only Phineas left giving the occasional chuckle, and dealt another card onto the line down the centre of the table.

“Annie?”

Anne hummed at her cards and then placed another two chips on her stack.

Lettie folded looking a little disappointed and pushed her already bet chips into the centre.

Charles matched her.

Phineas blinked at his cards and then spluttered and giggled, leaning back in his seat, shaking with humour at apparently nothing.

O’Malley rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration and then reached over and swept the chips in front of the ringmaster into the centre of the table.

“Carlyle?”

Phillip considered his cards and then matched the others, ending the betting of the game. They revealed their hands and Anne whooped when she won, drawing the chips into her pile with both arms. Charles grumbled and finished his drink and then took the bottle and filled their glasses as O’Malley and Phillip reset the game. He couldn’t help but notice that yet again, Phineas’ glass was considerably fuller than the rest and he sent Charles a disapproving glance. The man grinned back, apparently enjoying his drunken ringmaster’s antics.

Phineas slurred a ‘thank you’ as took a slurp of his newly refilled drink in between chuckles and then coughed when he inhaled it.

“Are you going to actually play this time?” O’Malley asked him, his dealing paused. Phineas nodded, still coughing, but then eventually managed to settle himself.

“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re a disruptive mess,” he complained under his breath, and Phineas laughed again, attempting to look offended and failing miserably. 

The game began, everyone quieting to consider their cards.

O’Malley put down four chips.

Anne bet five chips.

Lettie pushed five of her own forwards.

Charles took a swallow of his drink and push forwards 12.

“Phineas, it’s your go.”

The man looked up from his glass, a giggle still on his lips, and then frowned at his cards. He separated them, holding one in each hand, and then looked between them before laying both down on the table in front of him.

“Split,” he announced confidently, evoking a confused frown from O’Malley.

“Erm, no,” he rejected, his eyebrow raised.

Phineas frowned. “What, why?”

“Because you can’t do that.” His expression was set, one eyebrow raised.

“Why not, they’re a pair?”

“Because you can’t, that’s not how this works.”

“But… But…” he floundered, confused and entirely unable to understand what O’Malley was not so clearly trying to tell him. “I can do what I want, this is my circus!”

That set the whole table laughing again, leaving Phineas with his eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the two fives he had separated on the table top. He looked around at the tipsy group laughing at him, and then giggled himself.

“ _Our_ circus, I think you’ll find, Phin dear,” Phillip chuckled to him when the laughs of five of them had tired themselves out. “And you can’t do that because it isn’t how poker works.” 

Phineas sobered at that and frowned at the cards and chips before him.

“You’re thinking of blackjack,” Lettie told him helpfully, and his lips fell open in an ‘ohh’ of realisation before his expression brightened again. Phillip laughed, shaking his head at his drunken partner who had somehow managed to forget what game he was supposed to be playing over the few minutes it had taken to deal a new hand.

“What’s that one where you lie?” Phineas asked after a moment, turning to him curiously.

“Cheat?”

His expression lit in excitement. “Ooh, yes, that’s it. Can we play that?”

“Aren’t you usually playing that anyway?” Charles quipped, his expression smug.  

Phineas glared at him and then held his head high. “No, I’m an honest man.”

Anne squealed with laughter and Lettie raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

Phillip scoffed at his partner’s words. “I’m not sure you have an honest bone in your body,” he said, his expression bemused.

Phineas laughed, more amused by the words than he had any right to be and then snorted in an impressively ungentlemanly manner. He laughed harder at his accidental noise, his shoulders shaking with unsuppressed amusement and tears leaking from his squinted eyes.

“Maybe you’ve had enough whisky for one night,” Phillip sighed after a few seconds of watching him, and leant over to remove the half-filled glass from before his partner. Phineas let out a laugh-choked ‘hey’ of protest at the confiscation of his drink and reached over with significantly less coordination than usual to snatch the tumbler back, scattering cards and chips across the table. He took the glass from Phillip’s hand with more force than necessary, sloshing amber liquid over the cards before downing the rest indignantly.

Phillip glared with half hearted disapproval. “Child!” he muttered, and Phineas beamed and leant back on his chair, tilting it onto two legs and rocking it precariously.

For a second, everything was quiet, and then O’Malley spoke.

“So, back to poker?” he asked, his expression caught halfway between amused and irritated as he examined the scattered whisky covered mess their game had become.

“Hmm, yeah, if you fancy it,” agreed Anne with a shrug as she sipped at her drink, the glass looking large in her delicate hands.

Phillip looked over at the man still rocking contently on his chair. He smiled brightly when he noticed him looking, his lips sloppy and his eyes glassy and heavy. Phillip smiled back, amused.

“I’m not sure my drunken mess of a partner is in an overly suitable state for poker, if I’m honest,” he said, and Phineas’ eyebrows shot up.

“Rude! I may be drunk, but I’m not a mess. I am a sophisticated drunk!” He tripped over his words, sophisticated especially emerging as a stumbled mess of syllables.

Phillip raised his eyebrows. “What are you trying to say, dear, you’re slurring a little.”

Phineas opened his mouth to protest but then seemed to think better of it and glared instead and reached forwards, taking a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the table. He threw one at his partner. It missed by a long way, flying over his shoulder into the pile of paperwork filed on the floor, but the second one hit him squarely on the forehead. The third hit too.

“I take it back; you’re worse than a child!” Phillip exclaimed, his hands up to shield his face from the onslaught. Phineas grinned.

The fourth peanut missed, but the fifth hit him right on the nose, and with a sigh of frustration, he reached forwards an took a handful of his own, throwing the lot of them at his drunken mess of a partner.

Phineas flinched as the nuts rained upon him, still laughing excitedly, and in his distraction, pushed his chair just a little too far. The balance was lost, and he yelped, startled, as it topped over backwards, landing on the floor behind him with clatter and a crack and thud.

Phillip laughed a swear and leant back on his own chair to better see his drunken partner who was sprawled on his back on the carpet, the remains of his previously perfectly good chair trapped beneath him and surrounded by peanuts. He looked a little dazed but seemed okay until suddenly-

“Hic!”

He blinked and then pushed himself up onto his elbows.

“What, why have—” his words were stolen by another hiccup, and his expression froze before it was overtaken by laughter once again, his giggles only broken by hiccups.

“For heaven’s sake,” sighed O’Malley, his patience wearing a little thin. Anne and Lettie looked amused, and Charles was grinning almost as much as Phineas was, enjoying the product of his uneven glass filling. Phillip kind of thought it served the man right after his own tricks the night they had met, but it still left him with a drunken mess of a man to deal with throughout the night, and likely an ill and headachy one tomorrow.

He sighed in fond frustration at the man on the floor and then scraped back his chair, standing a little unsteadily himself and helped haul him to his feet. He was wobbly once he was stood, balance drowned in alcohol, and weak with laughter and Phillip had to hold him against the wall just to keep him upright. He could feel the man shaking with badly supressed giggles beneath the arm he held him pinned with.

He felt the next hiccup as well as heard it, Phineas’ chest spasming violently beneath his arm.

“Ow!” he said, sounding surprised and suddenly sober, and lifted a hand to his chest. “That hurt!”

Phillip raised an eyebrow at his offended expression. “Eh, I have no sympathy, you drunk yourself into this state.” He shrugged indifferently, and Phineas glared blearily.

“Rude!” he said, and then giggled again. Phillip rolled his eyes.

“Maybe it’s time you took your intoxicated husband home,” suggested Lettie from the table. “Try and get him into bed before that fifth glass he just downed takes effect.”

“Yeah, leave us to some peace and quiet,” Charles added, smirking and O’Malley grunted in agreement. Phineas hiccupped.

“You do realise you are partially responsible for this?” Phillip asked the small man at the table, nodding his head towards his partner.

Charles grinned. “Oh, of course.”

“Husband?” Phineas asked, seeming to only just realise what had been said, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Did we get married?”

“No dear, Lettie’s just teasing.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding a little disappointed. “I’d like -hic- I’d like that?” He looked a little disappointed too, and Phillip cupped a hand gently to his cheek.

“I know you would. But for now, how about we get you home?”

Phineas frowned pensively. “Will you be there?”

“Yes, of course.”

He let out a satisfied hum and another hiccup and then, “Okay,” he agreed, surprisingly needing no convincing to leave the poker party. “I’d go anywhere if you’re there Phillip. Do you remember-” the word came out as a slurred mess, but his intention was clear “-when I ran into that fire building for you?”

Phillip frowned at the thought. “Yes, and that was very silly of you.” He pulled the pliable man away from the wall, dragging one of his arms around his shoulders for support. They both stumbled heavily but remained upright. “Come on, home time.”

“It wasn’t silly,” Phineas protested, sounding a little hurt, but allowed himself to be guided towards the door. “I’d miss you?”

Phillip smiled, his chest warm, when he realised what the man was trying to say. “That’s very sweet, Phin. I love you too.”

Phineas hummed happily against his ear.

They paused in front of the table and the amused trio and O’Malley who still sat there. “Alright, see you in the morning,” Phillip said, and then glanced at the man he was supporting and looked to have second thoughts. “Well, tomorrow at some point. Probably.”

Charles laughed. “I can’t think he’ll be up before dinner tomorrow.”

Phillip sighed and sent a glare his way.

“Give him some water before he sleeps,” suggested Lettie, ever the mother hen.

He nodded. “Goodnight,” he said, and gave a tug on his partner’s arm to get him started again towards the door.

The four left at the table bid them farewell, their words mixing into an almost indistinguishable chorus.

Phineas glanced back behind him.

“Night!” he exclaimed and went to tip his hat before realising he wasn’t wearing one and frowned. Phillip rolled his eyes, and then, with a final wave to the table, he stumbled from the room, struggling under the alcohol and the weight of his unsteady and happily nonsensical but surprisingly sweet partner pressed warmly against his side.  


	25. Whump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phineas glanced behind, stomach swirling with fear, to see the five sneering men approaching at a drunken jog, bottles still clutched in their hands and eyes bright and clouded with alcohol. Both girls looked back too, stumbling slightly in their half walk, half run, their expressions matching pictures of barely suppressed terror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 24! A whumpy chapter, as the name suggests. Sorry Phin! 
> 
> Thanks to Jack and Flip who read through this for me.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Barnum!”

Phineas turned at the rough call of his name to find five men on the darkened and otherwise empty street behind him. It was late, later than he would normally be out with his girls, but they had stayed behind at the circus with him to watch the evening show and as the weather was warm, they had decided to walk rather than take a carriage back to the cosy townhouse where they lived with Charity before he carried on alone to the apartment he shared with Phillip. It was an odd arrangement, and on paper he still lived in the townhouse too, but somehow, it worked.  

The men behind yelled again, their calls echoing off the grimy bricks of the buildings that lined the streets and their tones slurred and callous. They were drunk and loud and obnoxious, staggering up the road with more force than balance, the bottles they held glinting in the dim orange glow of the streetlights and although their calls were not rude or abusive, just of his name and a request to wait, they were very clearly not approaching for kind conversation.

“Just ignore them,” Phineas muttered under his breath to the two girls in matching blue coats beside him, both with one of their hands held in his, and quickened his pace, pulling them along with him in the direction of their home. They lagged behind a little on their shorter legs and he released their hands, moving his to their shoulders instead, giving them both a gentle push until they were half walking, half jogging in front of him. Helen glanced back, her expression nervous and he flashed her a comforting smile and gave her shoulder a squeeze. Caroline kept her eyes fixed on the road before her, her fingers fiddling anxiously with her coat sleeve. 

“Oi, Barnum! Come back you coward!”

The voice was closer, slurred and angry and brutal, and followed by rough laughter and jeers and then, more worryingly, more rapid footsteps as the men broke into a run to reach him. To reach _them_ , Phineas’ thoughts corrected, and his heart throbbed in dread. He glanced behind, stomach swirling with fear, to see the five sneering men approaching at a drunken jog, bottles still clutched in their hands and eyes bright and clouded with alcohol. Both girls looked back too, stumbling slightly in their half walk, half run, their expressions matching pictures of barely suppressed terror. Helen reached for her older sister’s hand and Caroline grasped it back, the grip so tight her delicate knuckles whitened.

“Meater!”

“We just want to talk to you!”

“Yeah, just talk, to you and your little girls!”

The adrenaline that had been buzzing in Phineas’ veins surged, fight or flight running thought his thundering brain and then, realising he had very little chance of outrunning five grown men with the company of two small girls, he stopped and turned to face them. His daughters stopped too, their light footsteps skidding into silence, and he held his arms slightly from his sides, palms towards the girls standing behind him and posture tense.

“Girls, go.”

His voice was low and desperate with fear and his shoulders were raised and stiff in defence.

There was a pause and then, “ _Daddy_ ,” Helen breathed in realisation, half terrified but half protesting and took hold of the hand closest to her. She was shaking, he could feel the frightened trembles rattling though her limb and he gave her hand a squeeze. 

“They just want to talk,” he comforted uselessly, trying desperately to keep his own terror from his tone. “Now please, go, I’ll catch you up in a minute, I promise.”

Neither of them moved, out of protest or fear he couldn’t quite tell, and then the men were before him. They stopped, standing in a small, bedraggled line, all dressed in dirty shirtsleeves and each with a nasty, drunken smirk on their lips. The scent of whisky and sweat filled the air. Phineas surveyed them in turn, his head held high.

“What can I do for you this fine evening, gentlemen?” he said boldly despite the fear squirming dangerously in his gut.

“What can I do for you this fine evening,” one of them mimicked, slurring heavily and the others tittered and scoffed and then, quite suddenly, the man in the centre stepped forwards, swiping the pale blue top hat from the top of his dark curls. His head jolted to the side with the force of the blow and the hat tumbled to the floor, landing on the cobbles of the muddy road and skittering a few feet before rolling in a small circle on its brim. It stopped against the foot of one of the men, and then, with his eyebrows raised nastily and looking Phineas straight in the eye, he raised a foot and brought it down forcefully on the blue fabric, stamping the side in with a dull crunch as the felt crumpled.

Phineas looked at it, feigning indifference, and then forced his eyes back to the filthy men before him.

“That’s not what would usually be consider talking, sir.”

The man at the centre laughed brutishly and swung a clenched fist. Phineas stepped back, avoiding his drunken aim easily, and the man stumbled with excess momentum. His company jeered and then, expression crumpled with drunken fury, he launched himself again. Phineas caught him by the shoulders, shoving him backwards with enough force that he tumbled over, tripping over his own feet. He landed on the cobbles with a thud and a pained exhale as the air was forced from his lungs but was back on his feet within moments.

“Fight back, you failure of a man!” he exclaimed, suddenly frustrated. 

The group jeered in agreement, this time angrily and at their prey.

“Or are you too afraid without your freaks behind you?”

The man on the right suddenly laughed, his eyes wild and drunk and spittle spraying from his lips.

“Ha, but I know who is behind him,” he sneered, his thirsty eyes glinting as he glanced at the two girls still half hidden behind their father. “His darling daughters!”

The man launched himself forwards, a hand outstretched towards Caroline and she squealed and stumbled backwards, eyes wide and terrified. Phineas, heart in his throat and adrenaline thrumming, grabbed at the man with uncoordinated hands, trying to push him away as he had done with the first but he was pushed off, his grip slipping on the grimy shirt. The man danced out of his reach, jeering drunkenly and eyes bright with delight and he braced himself for another attempt.

Behind him, Helen screamed, “Daddy!” tumbling from her lips, high and panicked and terrified, and Phineas span, his heart in his throat, just in time to see another of the men darting towards her.

Too late to grab him, Phineas punched, his last fragment of passive composure lost in the desperation to protect his daughter just as they had predicted.

His fist connected awkwardly with the moving man’s face, the aim not quite right and the outside edge of his fist colliding against the stubbled lower jaw with a crack but the hit still strong and forceful enough to send the man staggering to the floor. He rolled on the cobbles, skirting unconsciousness and moaning lightly.

The four standing men whooped in delight at his sudden retaliation and advanced, their sloppy expressions viciously thrilled. Phineas spread his arms again, shielding his girls.

“Girls, _run_!” he demanded desperately and finally, finally, they did as he had asked and ran, sprinting hand in hand down the road towards their home, Caroline almost dragging her little sister along. The men let them go, no real interest in them, and Phineas’ heart sang in relief. He was left with four drunk and violent men, but his daughters were away and that was all that really mattered.

The men launched, and the fight that followed was messy and uncoordinated and for Phineas, desperate. He was outnumbered, four against one, but also taller and stronger than any of the other four men. He was also sober, his hits and punches and shoves landing where he intended them too, or mostly anyway. Adrenaline buzzed unhelpfully in his veins, blurring his thoughts and leaving his limbs clumsy and his heart and breathing racing.

Time almost paused, the punches coming as though in slow motion, mostly easy to block and return, but it was all so quick too, leaving him almost disorientated, defending himself with little thought as to who was attacking or what else was happening around him. He wasn’t a fighter, he hated violence, but there was a desperation in him born of the almost animalistic need for survival and so he hit back with as much force as he could muster.

The drunken, hideous, awful men were thrilled.

At some point, a fist struck his jaw and he stumbled back, head spinning and tasting blood from the blow but trying desperately to stay upright, knowing if he fell to the ground there was little chance of him regaining any sort of control over the fight.

He was dizzy from the punch and the adrenaline rush but he struggled on, and eventually one of them fell to the floor and didn’t get up, rendered unconscious by an almost desperately flailed fist to the side of his head. Phineas probably would have felt guilty if he wasn’t solely focused on not falling to the floor himself.

Another fist caught his chin and more blood spilt onto his tongue, the taste metallic and vile and he staggered again and then, before he could catch his balance, something hard and cold collided violently with side of his head. It shattered when it hit with an audible crack, sending glinting pieces of glass raining over his waistcoat and a wet cascade of amber liquid spilling down his neck. He staggered from the force of the blow, his skull alight where the bottle had struck and his head ringing as it rattled in his skull. His vision darkened and blurred, and his balance wavered and then, despite his throbbing, dizzy brain demanding he stay upright, he fell.

He hit the floor hard, the gravel scuffing at his palms and cheek but almost instantly started his desperate attempt to right himself, struggling against the disorientation and dizziness and a sudden sickness that was rolling in his stomach. He had barely managed to lift his head from the floor before a boot caught his stomach, painfully driving the air from his lungs and a yelp from his throat as he was rolled onto his back with the force.

The second kick found his ribs, forcefully colliding with his side and he _felt_ the crack as something inside him snapped leaving a white-hot pain in its wake and forcing him onto his side once again.

He curled weakly in on himself, his struggle to rise forgotten, drawing his arms to his chest and his knees up towards his stomach in a useless attempt to shield himself from their angry feet.

The men might have jeered, but his ears were ringing too much for him to really tell.

The third boot hit his knee, splitting his curled shape open, and the fourth his chest.

It hurt.

Everything hurt.  

He was almost relieved when the fifth kick caught his head, and in a flash of blinding agony, sent him spiralling into the blissfully numb void of unconsciousness.

 

TBC


	26. Last Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen was still yelling when he opened the door, his name on her lips and her expression one of unsuppressed panic, her eyes wide and wet and frightened. Something was clearly very, very wrong and Phillip’s heart had dropped into his stomach. 
> 
> “Helen, what’s happened?” he demanded, bending down to take her by the shoulders and giving her a small shake when all she suddenly seemed able to do was sob.
> 
> “It’s Daddy, they’ve got Daddy,” she finally managed to say, the awful words tumbling from her lips in a panicked stream of sounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 25! ~~on the first of march~~
> 
> So, i'm less sure about this one, it's a bit of a muddled mess although some of it, Phineas' train of thought especially, is meant to be that way, he's in a bit of a state after all. 
> 
> Also, the word count of this spiralled wildly out of control...
> 
> ATTENTION: this chapter was replaced on 03/03/19

Phillip was half sitting, half laying on the sofa, his feet up on the cushion his partner usually took and a well-thumbed book in his hands when he was startled from the pages by the sound of someone pounding on the dark, well-aged wood of their front door. The knocks were followed by frantic shouts of his name, called in a terrified, high pitched voice he knew so well, and he jumped from his seat, worry churning in his gut, to answer it. The old book he had been reading, so carefully looked after, fell to the floor with a thump in his haste.

Helen was still yelling when he opened the door, his name on her lips and her hand raised in preparation to pound on the wood again. She stumbled into him as the door was pulled inwards, apparently having been leaning against the wood, and he caught her by the arm, stopping her falling to the floor before him. She was shaking violently, he could feel it through the sleeve of her soft blue coat, and her eyes were wide and wet and afraid, her entire expression one of unsuppressed, raw panic.

“It’s Daddy, they’ve got Daddy!” The words tumbled from her lips in a panicked stream of sounds and were followed by a distressed sob. Tears leaked from her wide, terrified eyes, spilling down her cheeks and falling unstopped from her chin. It took Phillip a second to gather what she had said, and then time almost felt to stop, ice filling his veins as dread surged in his mind, knowing instantly that something was very, very wrong.

“Who has?” he asked her urgently, forcing his own growing terror from his tone in a hopeless effort to calm her, and bent down to take her by the shoulders. Her shaking hands reached for his sleeves, taking hold so tightly her knuckles whitened as she jittered on the spot with unsuppressed panic.

“The men who tried to get us!” she wailed, her words shrill and so fast he could barely understand what had been said. “He told us to go but we have to help him! They’re hurting him, Flip, there’s five of them, they’re hitting him!”

Her words caught him like a punch of his own and his partner’s name fell from his lips, his voice high and shaky just as hers was, awful, heart-breaking thoughts he didn’t want to imagine flitting through his head. Phineas was a large man, and a strong one, but he wasn’t a fighter, and although he would usually be able to hold his own, one against five was not a fair match, and by the sounds of it, it was not one he was winning either.

Phillip, barely a logical thought left in his mind, fear and adrenaline surging violently and muddling his thoughts, let go of Helen so suddenly she stumbled and took a panicked step towards their garden gate pulling her with him, about to go to the man he loved before realising that he had neither shoes nor any idea where he was heading. He turned back into his house and grabbed the pair of shoes he had discarded by the door upon returning home earlier that evening, sinking to the floor to tie them.

Then another thought, one he knew he should have had earlier but hadn’t, struck his brain.

“Where’s Caroline?” he worried, a chilled concern stirring for the absent girl, and looked up at her sister hovering anxiously before him.

“She’s gone to find help,” Helen stuttered hurriedly in explanation, seemingly thrown by the change of topic before she flapped her hands at him in terrified agitation. “Please Flip, come quickly, they’re really hurting him, he needs our help!”

Phillip exhaled shakily, relief that Caroline was apparently out of the men’s way too mixing with the dread for his partner sitting heavy in his pounding heart.

“Helen, where is he?”

He struggled with his laces as she explained where she had left him with the five brutal men, his fingers trembling in fear and uncoordinated with a sudden rush of adrenalin. Once she had finished, he admitted defeat to his shoes and resorted to stuffing the still untied laces inside.

Phillip’s racing mind knew the place she was describing though. It was a normally quiet residential street, a road along the walk to the circus and so one they often traversed, and it wasn’t far, within running distance easily, as Helen had already proven. He looked at the terrified, wet eyed girl jittering on his doorstep as he climbed to his feet and knew she couldn’t come with him, not when her father had ended up in such a situation by tying to keep her from their violence.

“I’m going to go to him,” he told her firmly, as he ushered her over the threshold and closed the door behind them with a click. “But you need to go home now.”

She started to protest just as he knew she would, her father’s daughter through and through, and he cut her off, placing a hand on her shoulder and catching her desperate eyes. “No, listen, Helen; you’ve been so brave, he’d be so proud of you, but he’s put himself in danger to make sure you and Caroline are safe, and I can’t take you back there, not when I don’t know what I’m going to find. You have to go home, okay?”

There was a pause and then she nodded jerkily and uttered a whispered, “Okay, Flip.”

“Thank you,” he breathed, relieved, and then added a tight “Come on,” and took her hand, pulling her along with him as he ran through their gate and started in the direction she had pointed him.

He would be quicker without her, he knew, and he was half tempted to leave her to return home along, but he knew he shouldn’t abandon her, it would be wrong, disrespectful to her father who had risked his own safety to ensure hers and so he pulled her along with him as he ran. She struggled with his pace, barely able to keep up on her shorter legs, but she didn’t ask him to slow, and he didn’t offer.

The streets were dark, lit only by the dim orange glow of the occasional gas street lamps, and almost entirely abandoned. It was late, and a Thursday, and most people were already home, and _safe_ his mind unhelpfully added, but the few who remained, stragglers stumbling home from the pubs as closing house approached, started at them passed.

Phillip found he barely noticed the attention, and much less cared, his racing, anguished mind focused on the one troubled man he so desperately needed to reach.    

He slowed as they approached the turning for the road down which Charity and her daughters lived, torn between seeing the girl safely to her door and continuing on his way to help her father. His heart demanded he keep going, but his mind was torn. The decision was taken from him when Helen slipped her hand from his and looked up at him with wide worried eyes.

“I’m okay from here, Flip,” she gasped between panted breaths, “Go help him, please?”

He paused and then nodded, “thank you,” wheezing from his lips as he picked up his pace, forcing his aching, shaky legs into a sprint. He glanced over his shoulder a few steps later to see her darting down the road to her home, her expression once again tight with fear and her eyes glistening wetly in the streetlights. Phillip numbly wondered how long it would be before she arrived at the scene with her soon to be just as concerned mother.

Charity still cared for Phineas deeply, he knew, just as he cared for her, and he doubted she would be able to stay away and wait patiently for news any more than he would. She would be calmer though, than him probably and her daughter certainly; she had nerves of steel, although, Phillip supposed after putting up with her impulsive, daring, determined husband for so many years she had little choice.

He sprinted the rest of the way, feet pounding on the hard mud lining the road, lungs aching and pulse hammering and thoughts swimming. Awful outcomes of what he might find flitted through his anguished brain, images of his partner broken and beaten, unconscious and at the mercy of the brutal five. Worse, heart-breakingly dreadful scenarios crossed his thoughts too, and he shook them from his thoughts, forcing himself to hold on to the fragment of hope still lingering that Phineas was okay, winning the fight he was forced into, and Helen’s panic had been unnecessary. His heart though, heavy and pounding in his chest, was well aware of the unlikeliness of him arriving to such a scene. 

The street was buzzing with activity when he arrived, and his stomach clenched as the seriousness of the situation was confirmed. There were four police men, one standing beside two men handcuffed on the floor, one looking furious and drunk and struggling forcefully against his bindings, angered words spilling from his tongue, and one barely conscious, his blinks heavy and his eyes unfocused and blood drying thickly on his chin, dribbled from a badly split lip and coating much of his filthy, off white shirt. Phillip numbly wondered who had hit him.

Two of the police men were struggling with a third man, trying to restrain him as he fought furiously against their hold, yelling loudly, his angered words slurred and cruel. They appeared to be struggling though, for he was strong and although he was uncoordinated, with alcohol, Phillip assumed, he was faring well against them though determination alone.

Three other men, not from the police, he assumed from their dress, but helpful good samaritans were wrestling with a fourth man. He was just as violent and angry as the first but as he watched they succeeded in bringing him to his knees, holding his hands behind back with a cry of triumph. The man shouted and fought their grip before his eyes caught hold of Phillip and his expression grew into a chilling, terrible sneer of pride. 

Phillip’s fear swelled at the look, at the angry smile playing on his lips, terrified of what he had achieved to result in such satisfaction. His face was familiar though, he realised after a second, and his expression one he had seen before too. It took a moment to place them man, and then cold dread shook his heart when he did, because he and the other three too were protesters from the circus, men who he had seen countless times before holding signs and torches and shouting abuse at the troupe and ringmasters alike. It seemed they had finally progressed to actions worse than their words.

It was after that he realised the fifth man Helen had mentioned was nowhere to be seen. 

The fourth policeman, one more smartly dressed than the others, supposedly their superior, was positioned a little further down the street, his back to the disorder behind him. He was standing with another a man, one who looked tired and worried and had a hand almost protectively on the back of the girl he was beside. It was the girl, an anxious but surprisingly composed Caroline, he realised after a second, who the policeman was talking to, interviewing most likely, as he was writing, jotting what she said down in a small, dark notebook.

Caroline was holding her father’s pale blue hat in her hands, shuffling it round by the brim nervously and smudging it with red from her hands, as she spoke. It was a habit Phillip had seen from her father, too, on the few occasions he was truly unsure of himself. The hat was scuffed and battered, mud staining the once blue felt, and there was a large, crumpled dent in one side, leaving the top sloping towards the brim as a result. It looked like it had been stepped on with enough force to break the stiff felt and Phillip realised with a stab that it probably had.

There were a few other people there too, scatterings of men and women stood at the side lines, paused on their ways home by the commotion. Most looked concerned and a little uncomfortable, their gazes mostly focused on the police men and samaritans alike attempting to subdue the still struggling violent men, but their eyes sometimes flitting to a hunched figure propped against the wall of a building just across the road from the disorderly arrests, watching him with a combination of both sympathy and morbid curiosity.

Phillip’s eyes didn’t linger though, not on the police men nor Caroline nor the men handcuffed on the floor, instead following the gazes of the lingering spectators to the man and to the woman who was beside him. Her expression was concerned as she spoke to him in words too soft for Phillip to hear over the yells of the still furious men behind him. They were both standing though, Phineas leaning heavily against the wall, his head bowed nearly to chest, his face hidden in shadow, and her to the side of him, one hand on his elbow, but for comfort of physical support Phillip couldn’t quite tell.

His clothes were ruffled and torn and streaked with dirt and blood, one of his suspenders ripped from his trousers and handing limply down his back, and his hair was dishevelled, his fringe fallen forwards over his forehead, the curls clumped and sticky and darker than was usual. His head snapped up at the sound of Phillip’s rapidly approaching footsteps, throwing his distressed expression into the light before his wide, dazed eyes slowly focused and it crumbled.

Phillip flinched too, heart clenching at his partner’s startled terror and at the blood coating much of the left side of his face. It was spilt from somewhere on his forehead, the wound itself hidden by his clumped fringe but the result of it stark and awful against his unnaturally pale skin. It had bled a lot, though, the trails of red extending down his neck, turning the collar of his once white shirt a morbid crimson. His bottom lip was bleeding too, leaking sluggishly over his chin and dripping on the front of his already ruined waistcoat.

Phillip, relief and concern surging, broke into a sprint towards him, and Phineas pushed himself off the wall, shaking the hand from his arm despite the gentle protest falling from the woman’s lips and limped unsteadily towards him. His balance was almost entirely off, his pace stumbled and dizzy, and he looked barely able to support his own weight, his right knee buckling, threatening to give altogether with every step but he continued stubbornly forwards.

They collided in the middle of the road and, despite the audience and the blood, Phillip drew him into his arms, pulling him into an embrace and holding him close enough he could feel the tremors of his twitching limbs rippling through his shaking form. He burrowed his head in his partner’s shoulder, breathing in his wonderfully familiar scent, normally sweet and musky and hinting of peanuts but now tainted with mud and whisky and the sickeningly powerful tang of iron. He was warm and solid though, and despite his fears, thankfully alive and aware and holding him back with almost more strength than he looked capable of.

“Are you okay?” He demanded into his shoulder, his words weak with relief but desperate for answer and spoken at the same time as Phineas stammered “I’m so sorry, Phil,”, his voice thick and breathy and ever so slightly slurred against his ear. Phillip frowned, heat aching and confused at the tormented apology and released his hurting partner, pushing him back by his shoulders until their eyes could meet. Phineas was frowning too, his entire expression crumpled with emotion.

“Why are you apologising?” he asked tenderly, stomach aching at his partners anguished words, and reached up to cup his cheek, his thumb ghosting over the graze marring the skin. He surveyed his face, taking in the cut just about visible through his fringe and the bleeding split running through his lip and the reddened skin along his jaw that was soon to bruise. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Phineas blinked, confused and anxious, his eyebrows furrowed over hazel eyes that were wet and raw and worryingly unfocused.

“I don’t know, I worried you… they… they went after my girls?” he stuttered, his tone shaking and tight and the words forced between shallow, gasped breaths. He sounded close to tears, his showman’s mask cracked and failed, and Phillip reached down and gently took his partner’s hand in his. Phineas flinched lightly, his whole body twitching, but then his trembling fingers scrabbled for purchase and he gripped back with enough force his bloodied knuckles whitened beneath the red. His skin was cold and clammy, unnaturally chilled with shock despite the warm summer’s heat.

“I know, Phin,” Phillip comforted softly, holding his bleary gaze, and his other hand giving his partner’s shoulder a gently squeeze. “Helen told me, but it’s okay now, they’re fine, not hurt at all. It’s you we should be worried about.”

Phineas let out a low keen of distress and he looked around, trying to locate the girl he seemed to think he had missed, stumbling when he turned too quickly. Phillip steadied him, struggling with his weight, his teeth worrying his lower lip in concern.

“It’s okay, she’s at home, I took her back on the way. She was so brave though, you know, just like her father.” Blurry hazel eyes found his again, still lost and hurting but the panic that had surged at the name of his youngest daughter a little faded.

“Caroline was brave too,” he muttered in agreement, his gaze flicking over his partner’s shoulder to where his daughter was still deep in conversation with the police man. “They said she brought help.”

Phillip blinked at the comment before realising with a stab of concern that he must have been unconscious or near enough to not recall her arrival when the fight had been stopped. Phineas sighed shakily, pulling him back from his troubled thoughts, and then his expression crumpled to distress once again.

“Why didn’t they go home, Phillip, they could have been hurt?” he breathed, his tone achingly raw. 

“Because they’re as brave and stubborn as their father.”

Phineas huffed lightly, the exhale shaking, and then rolled his eyes. He looked to regret it instantly, grimacing as blinked his heavy, bleary eyes and then stumbling dazedly once again. Phillip tightened his hold and frowned, concern gnawing uncomfortably at his gut.

“Dizzy?” he asked, his head tilted to the side in question and his eyebrows furrowed in worry, and Phineas’ gaze retuned to him and hummed lightly in what Phillip assumed to be confirmation.

“I’d imagine you’re concussed,” he muttered under his breath, and then lifted a hand and gently swept away his partners’ sticky fringe, examining the still weeping cut just above his left eyebrow. It was large and jagged, in definite need of stitching, and a fresh dribble of blood leaked as the movement of the hair disturbed it. The ruby droplets ran along the top of his eyebrow before joining the darkened trails down over his cheek.

The slip skin surrounding the cut itself was swelling and beneath the blood, a reddened, boot shaped mark was slowly darkening to an ugly, vicious bruise. Phillip exhaled shakily at the sight of it, his eyebrows furrowing in an overwhelming sadness at the wound and the brutality of the action he knew to have caused it. It hurt to know they hadn’t stopped their assault even after they had brought him to the floor.

“Oh, _Phin_ ,” he breathed, voice strained and heart breaking at the cruelty, his composure cracking and Phineas gazed down at him with wide, troubled, hazel eyes. He looked upset again, and Phillip wasn’t quite sure if it was due to his own sudden show of emotion or not. “What happened?” he asked, half rhetorically, his tone as distressed as his partner looked. Phineas glanced away, his expression crumpled and his teeth worrying at his already bleeding lip in a way that had to hurt.

“I…I wouldn’t fight them,” he all but whispered after a second, his words trembling and stuttered, “so they tried to grab my girls, and I stopped… I stopped them, and they ran, but then we were fighting and then there was a bottle, I think.” He raised his shaking left hand to the side of his head, fingers probing at the likely bruising skin beneath his dark, clumped hair. A piece of glass fell from his curls, bouncing from his shoulder on its way to the floor. His eyes were confused, his expression forced into a distressed frown as he struggled to remember events that couldn’t have happened more than twenty minutes before.

“It hurt,” he continued, “And then… I don’t know, I don’t… I think I fell, there were boots?” The hand in his hair tightened, pulling in frustration, and his eyes were wide and unfocused and edging on panicked. “I don’t know, Phil?”

Phillip shushed him, heart breaking at his uncharacteristic show of emotions and reached up to remove the hand still forcefully entwined amongst the dark waves. Phineas flinched as his fingers were pried away and a sharp gasp escaped his lips as he jerked the hand from his grip, pulling it protectively to his stomach. His eyes were wide, pain mixing with frustration and distress, and Phillip’s chest clenched as he realised it was him who had caused it.

“Let me look, Phin?” he asked cautious and hurting and worried as to what was wrong, his voice soft and begging and after a second Phineas exhaled his held breath shakily and uncurled his arm from his stomach, holding his hand up for him to see.

Phillip took it gently, holding it up in the dim orange glow of a nearby streetlamp and Phineas let him, the shaking hand limp and curled in his grasp. He examined it, frowning, and winced at both the almost expected scrapes on his knuckles and the much less expected swollen and bruising skin leading down the outside edge of the back of his hand. His gaze flickered up to his partner, and then he lightly felt along the fragile bones leading from his smallest finger to his wrist, gut stirring at the pained hiss that escaped his lips when he reached a section that flexed under his thumb.

“ _Phineas_ ,” he breathed, heart hurting for his partner, a man who hated violence but who it seemed had had to fight back, to defend himself and his girls from the drunken attack with enough force that his poorly executed punch had been strong enough to break his own hand.

“I had to stop him, he was going after Helen,” he whispered, his wet, anxious, hazel eyes holding his partners and his expression crumpled again as his stumbling train of thought returning to his daughters. “They went after my girls,” he all but whispered, his voice low and choked and desperate.  

“I know, I know,” Phillip comforted, softly. “But they’re arrested now, they’re going to go to jail, and the girls are safe, they’re okay, and you’re going to be okay too,” he continued, not mentioning the one man who had escaped arrest and hoping with all his heart for the end of his sentence to be true.

Phineas looked away, glancing anxiously at the men over his shoulder. “They’re protesters,” he said after a moment and Phillip wasn’t quite sure if he had just noticed or if he was merely reiterating. “I’ve seen them at the circus.”

“I know, I’ve seen them before too.” He gave the hands held in his a squeeze and then pulled them to his chest, holding them tightly and looking seriously into the anxious, concussed eyes. “They can’t hurt anyone else now, you know, not you nor Caroline nor Helen nor anyone else at the circus, not anymore, okay?”

Phineas held his eyes for a second, still tremoring, but then nodded, the movements so small Phillip nearly missed them. The distress didn’t fade from his eyes though, and his expression stayed uneasy, and Phillip found his chest aching for the troubled man he loved.

“Come here,” he breathed wetly, and drew his partner to him once again, holding him tightly despite their audience. Phineas leant his head down on top of his, and Phillip felt his expression crumple, his hold on his emotions slipping. “I was so worried, you know?” he admitted into the broad chest he was pressed against, and Phineas muttered another anxious, unnecessary apology. Phillip shushed him and held him tighter as he ran a comforting hand over his shoulder blades.

He closed his eyes and drew in a shuddering breath, trying desperately to hold in the almost overwhelming swell of relief, because although the man he loved and who he certainly could have lost that night was upset and hurting, he was safe and alive and pressed against his chest, his rapid heart beating against his skin. 

Phillip was startled by his thoughts by the sound of footsteps and Phineas jumped too, eyes widening as he jolted round fast enough to throw his tentative balance and draw a pained hiss from his throat. One arm went to wrap around his chest, bracing apparently sore ribs, but Phillip kept his grip on the other, holding him steady when he stumbled, and turned too to look in the direction of the noise.

The footsteps belonged to Charity and Helen, it turned out, not far behind just as Phillip had predicted. They were both running up the road towards them, Helen leading and dragging her mother long but Charity not protesting the speed of their approach either. They were wearing almost identical expressions of anguished relief, Helen’s wet, teary eyes in contrast to her mother’s dry, hurting ones the only difference. Caroline was with them too, her features more composed but equally concerned, her father’s battered hat still in her hands.

Phineas half gasped, half groaned but then, as they neared, dropped to his knees to embrace his daughters, holding them tightly to him once they arrived. It must have hurt, Phillip knew, and he was getting blood in their hair but neither father nor daughters seemed to care. Charity’s expression crumpled at the sight of him, her heart likely aching in painful sympathy just as Phillip’s was. She reached down, a hand rubbing softly over his back at the base of his neck.

“I told you to go home,” he breathed into their hair, his eyes closed, and then let out a noise so close to a sob Phillip couldn’t be sure it wasn’t. “You were both so brave, I’m so proud of you.” His voice was thick with emotion, but when he released them enough for their faces to be seen, he had from somewhere regained a little of his composure, his showman’s mask slipping on by willpower alone.

“You were really brave too,” Helen insisted, her wide, hazel eyes fixed on him and tight with concern, and he gave her a sad smile and tightened his arms around her in another quick squeeze.

“Are you feeling better now, Daddy?” Caroline asked cautiously when her sister was released, her voice soft and heavy with concern and her gaze wandering his bloodied face. Phillip didn’t know how he had been when she had seen him before, possibly unconscious he realised with a shudder, but he almost didn’t want to know, the bleeding, hurting, broken man beside him who seemed better to her was breaking his heavy heart already.

“Yes, I’m feeling much more myself now,” Phineas said to her, his composure returning for the sake of his girls. Then he swallowed and looked her in the eyes, his expression suddenly a little uncomfortable. “I’m so sorry you had to see me like that.”

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she said, sounding pained but her expression forced into a smile. “You weren’t feeling well.”

Phillip frowned at their exchange, troubled and confused, but then before he had time to ponder it, Phineas had released his daughters and stumbled dizzily to his feet, his mask unable to hide his spinning head, and turned to Charity instead.

She looked at him with sad, hurting eyes, and lifted one hand to his face, her fingertips hovering over the bruising on his jaw and the graze on his cheek before gently lifting his sticky fringe just as Phillip had done. Her expression fell at the bruising skin and as she watched, another few drops of blood trickled from the wound.

“Oh Phin, look at you,” she said, voice pained, and her eyebrows puckered in concern. Phineas lifted a hand and gently took hers from his head.

“I’m okay, Chairy,” he lied softly, and then looked to be taking her hand to his lips before he thought better of it and drew them to his chest instead. His eyes tightened again, upset making its return at the sight of hers.

“I know, you’re always okay,” she sighed, and then when she spoke her voice was small and tight with emotion. “Thank you, Phin, for what you did, I’m… Thank you.”

Phineas exhaled shakily. “What else was I to do?” he asked, his voice small and tormented.

“I don’t know,” Charity whispered, eyes heavy, and then pulled him into an embrace of her own. They only held it for a matter of seconds, but then when they separated, they both looked a little more in control of their emotions.

“You two should go,” she said to them, sense returned with her composure and Phillip blinked at the sudden change in topic. “I’m sure the police will want to speak to you, Phin, but you’re in no state to be interviewed now, I’ll tell them they can come by another day when you’re feeling more yourself.”

Phineas looked to almost deflate at her words, a relieved, shaky exhale falling from his lips and he nodded.

“Home sounds like a marvellous idea,” he admitted, and then turned to Phillip, stumbling enough that he had to wrap an arm around his waist to steady him. He winced at the man’s poor sense of balance and then at the leg he was still favouring and knew walking anywhere far was not an option. Phineas frowned too, looking suddenly unsure again, and Phillip gave his waist a gentle, comforting squeeze, but his own thoughts were worrying too about what to do next.  

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but my husbands fetched a carriage.” The soft, blessed words came from the kind woman wandering over from where she had stayed hovering beside the wall, and Phillip turned to her, finding her dark eyes soft and sympathetic and a little curious, and her hand raised slightly, indicating down the road where a carriage was waiting. He blinked at it, not having noticed its approach.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhear,” she apologised, her expression a little embarrassed, and Phillip turned back to her, shaking his head, a relived smile on his lips.

“No, that’s brilliant, thank you,” he breathed and then added “and thank you so much for earlier too,” as an afterthought when the image of her sat beside his injured and tormented partner flitted back into his mind. “it was… thank you.”

She blushed lightly, but then said, “he’s more than welcome,” before she hurried off down the road in the direction of the carriage, or more likely in the direction of the young blond haired man who stood beside it.

Phillip watched her for a moment, gratitude warm in his gut, and then turned to his partner, taking in his bleeding head and unfocused eyes and the arm still wrapped around his ribs. He sighed, hurting too. “We should probably get you to the hospital.”

Phineas blinked at his words and then shook his head, anxiety returning to his expression. He looked as though he was holding onto his recently regained composure by force of weakening will alone. Phillip frowned, heart aching in concern.

“Your head needs stitch-” he started, his eyebrows furrowed and his gaze flicking up to the still leaking split on his forehead, only to be interrupted by his partner’s almost begged ‘no’ of protest.

“I think you should go, Daddy, your head’s still bleeding awfully,” Caroline argued softly, her words calm and earnest, and fondness surged in Phillip’s heart for the calm, collected, caring little girl who stood before him. 

“Phin, please,” Charity breathed to him, her expression troubled, “You need to go.”

“Yes, please go, you’re hurt,” Helen added, her eyes too wise beyond her years.

Phineas glanced around at them, his mask fallen and his expression anxious and overwhelmed and then turned back to his partner.

“Please, Phil”, he protested almost desperately, his voice small and awfully vulnerable, as he looked down with unfocused, tormented, hazel eyes. “I just want to go home.”

Phillip’s resolve crumpled at the sight of him, and, heart aching, he relented. It was a poor idea he knew, and Charity agreed if her troubled hum was anything to go by, but Phineas was hurting inside as well as out, and it seemed unfair to force him somewhere he didn’t want to be when he was so scared and vulnerable and not in his right mind through shock and fear and his possible concussion. Phillip just hoped nothing more serious than a cuts and bruises lay beneath his clothes.

“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly, and forced a small smile, brave onto his lips. “We can go home.”

Phineas looked to physically sag with relief and let out a shaky, almost wet, sigh, and then allowed himself to be led towards the waiting carriage. Charity took his other arm by the elbow, holding him tenderly despite her disapproval of their destination and Caroline and Helen walked on their mother’s other side, their hands tightly clenched to one another.

They walked past the men he had been so brutally attacked by on the way to the carriage, and Phineas eyed them anxiously, his posture stiff, and then flinched violently when one of them glanced up at them, a furious sneer on his lips. Anger swelled in Phillip’s gut, hot and burning, and he pulled his hurting partner closer, hating the men who had succeeded in evoking such a flinch from the normally unflappable man with just a look with all his heart.

They had threatened his daughters and then fought him for a drunken laugh just because they didn’t like his show, and they had continued their ruthless assault even after he had fallen, laying defenceless on the ground, and they had kicked him cruelly even after they had knocked him into unconsciousness without a care. They were awful men, brutal and violent and not worth the air they breathed, but they had at least been arrested, or most of them had, and Phillip hoped neither Phineas nor his daughters nor the troupe of performers at the circus would ever have to deal with them, or others like them, ever again. 

 

 

TBC


	27. Sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was Phillip who opened the door to their home, and it was Phillip who closed it behind them too, but it was Phineas who turned back to lock it and then reached up, one arm bracing his hurting ribs, to slide the bolt across at the top. Continues from day 25.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 26... haha
> 
> So, well, this chapter fought and kicked as I dragged it into existence, and has ended up much much too long to be reasonable for fff, but well, it is what it is. I hope it doesn't disappoint. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the happy ending, eventually.

It was Phillip who let them into their home. He unlocked the door awkwardly, Phineas leaning heavily against him. He was dizzy from the blows to his head and shaking from the adrenaline crash and his injured right knee seemed reluctant to take his weight. Twice on the short journey between the carriage and their door it had given way entirely, only Phillip’s quick reactions and tight grasp around his waist keeping him from making an unscheduled return to the hard, dry mud of the road.

It was Phillip who closed it too, pushing it distractedly to with a click as the clasp slid into place after he had helped his unsteady partner over the threshold. But it was Phineas who locked it behind them, determinedly resisting as Phillip tried to lead him down their hallway, and it was him who stretched up with muffled groan, one hand bracing his ribs, to warily slide the bolt across at the top.

Phillip let him, watching silently once he realised what he was doing and hurting at both his partner’s physical pain, worsening as the shock and adrenalin wore away, and the buried turmoil silently running through his racing mind.

He had been almost reluctant to leave Caroline and Helen, and Charity too, at the crime scene, and had taken some convincing to get into the carriage. He had hugged them tightly before he left, ribs forgotten, and then almost begged Charity to remember to lock the door once she was home, his tone almost desperate with concern as though it wasn’t something she did every night anyway. He was worried for her, even after her betrayal of agreeing with Phillip to arrange for a doctor to visit them, and worried for his daughters too.

He had been silent throughout the cab ride home, sitting with his back straight and arms wrapped bracingly around his chest, tightening supportively with every bump and jerk the carriage made. His body was twisted lightly to the side, his back ever so slightly to the cab and his bloodied face turned away towards the window leaving his expression hidden from Phillip’s view. Whether it was a calculated decision or not, Phillip couldn’t decide, unable to work out if he was watching the streets or purposefully hiding his expression or if he was just in search of space. He was an independent man after all, one who preferred to lick his wounds alone.

Twice along the short journey a passing streetlight fell upon the glass, the soft orange glow lighting his features, reflecting the tight and almost haunted expression they held for Phillip’s concerned eyes to see. The first time had passed unnoticed by Phineas, leaving his emotions unknowingly unmasked, his defences down when he thought no one could see. He realised the second time, though, and he had looked up. Their eyes caught in the murky glass, tortured hazel holding concerned blue, before the streetlight passed and the moment was gone.

Phillip helped him to the dining table once he was satisfied they were securely locked inside their home, treading carefully in the dim lighting cast through from the living room, the lamps still lit after he had left in a hurry little over half an hour before, and lowered him gently onto one of their hard, wooden chairs. The sofa would be kinder on his bruises he knew, but he was also aware of how heavy the man was to lift and between the more upright position of the dining chairs and the help of the table itself, he reasoned he would be more likely to be able to help him to his feet from there.

Phineas groaned as he sat. His features tightened, his eyes closing and lips pressing whitely together, and his breaths were shallow and useless as he tried to still his hurting ribs. He leant on the table with one arm, his weight through the elbow and his posture oddly twisted in a vain attempt to make himself a little more comfortable. The other arm was, as was suddenly usual, wrapped bracingly around his chest.

“Didn’t hurt this much before,” he rasped, his first words he had said since he insisted Charity lock her door back before the carriage ride.

Phillip’s gut gave its own painful stab in sympathy, and although he wanted nothing more than to take him in his arms, he resisted, well are that the embrace would likely be neither welcome nor pain-free.

“Hmm, shock and adrenaline are wonderful painkillers,” he commented quietly instead, eyes sad, and gave his shoulder a small, soft squeeze before he left to light the lamps. Phineas watched him, his head pivoting above his stiff torso and his tense expression muted in the dim light creeping through from the lounge. 

“I could fetch you some whisky, but I’m not sure it’ll be of much help.” He paused thoughtful, a lit match held to the tip of the lantern, concentrating as the gas lamp took flame, and then, “Actually, alcohol might not be a good idea given your head, we should probably wait until the doctor has seen you. Although, hopefully he’ll bring something a little stronger than whisky.”

He trailed off as he lit a second lamp and glanced over to the table, his expression apologetic, to find Phineas watching him numbly and squinting in the sudden brightness that had filled the room. His eyes looked as though they were held open by force of will alone and Phillip frowned, confused, before realisation struck.

“Headache?” he asked, concerned but not all that surprised, as he reached behind him to turn the gas flow down on the lighting in preparation for the answer he knew he ought to receive. Phineas, somewhat surprisingly, hummed in agreement before he seemed to catch on to what Phillip was doing.

“You can leave the lamps on, Phil; I’m fine.”

Phillip sighed and turned down the other lamp too, refraining from lighting the third at all. The room was left dimly lit by their soft orange glow.

He turned back to the table and looked at his frowning partner. His features were no longer muted by shadow and he took in the brittle façade masking his expression and the anguish in his pinched eyes it was unable to hide. He looked at the drying blood cracking on his cheek and chin and the still wet ruby droplets leaking from the rough split above his eyebrow. The darkening blue surrounding the angry boot-shaped mark was slowly growing over his forehead, spreading over his brow and blackening the eye below as the evening latened. He saw the tense posture and the arms wrapped around his likely broken ribs and the impressive swelling of the limply curled hand and the dark mottling taking over its skin, extending from wrist to grazed and bloodied knuckles.

He was not fine, not even close.

“You know as well as I do that that isn’t true.” The words croaked past the lump in his tight throat, whispered but awfully loud, and Phineas looked away, tortured eyes returned to shadow. He was hurting, both inside and out, and yet he was determined not to let it show. Phillip, guilt swelling painfully in his heart, didn’t know what he could do to solve any of it. He was brittle, so close to breaking. 

“I’m going to get you some ice,” he choked, knowing ice would solve very little but needing to do _something_ , anything, and then, before Phineas had time to respond, he fled the room.

His composure crumbled the moment he passed into the hallway, and he drew in a wet, shuddering breath. It hurt to see the man he loved so pained and nervous but determined to hide it, his usual vibrant excitement extinguished by five brutal men with too much whisky and too little conscience. He allowed his heart to ache and his exhales to trembled whilst he set the kettle on to boil and didn’t force away the tears that collected in his eyes as he wrapped ice in clean tea towels and he didn’t attempt to still the shaking of his hands as he took a glass from the cupboard and filled it.

He leant back against the counter after that, watching through salt-blurred eyes as steam swirled from the kettle as the water slowly warmed. The tears were warm on his cheek, tracing a trail over his skin just as the blood was over his partner’s, and his stomach rolled a little at the thought. It rolled at his tears too, because it shouldn’t be him that was crying, even if in that moment it seemed to be him that was needing it. Phineas was strong, much stronger than he was, and it was showing.

The kettle whistled, piercing and high and startling.

He bottled his emotions again as he poured the boiled water into a bowl, mixing it with cool until it was comfortable against his skin, and took a third cloth from the cupboard. Once his collection was ready he wiped the rogue wetness from his eyes with the heel of his hand. He took the cold towels under his arms and picked the bowl and glass from the counter and then, with one last shuddering breath, he forced a soft showman’s smile onto his lips as he had seen Phineas do countless times before.

He left the kitchen with his hands full and his heart heavy and returned, emotions again supressed, to the dining room.

Phineas was, as he knew he would be, still sat at the table when he returned, his posture hunched despite his ribs and his head propped up on his hands. His bleary eyes flashed up at the soft tap of his shoes on the hardwood boards as he opened the door, momentarily fearful before they settled back to pained. Phillip’s caught them briefly before his barely focused gaze pulled away, leaving the air almost heavy between them.

He swallowed and then stepped fully into the room.

“I brought water too,” he opened as though he had not just seen what he had and set the items he was holding down on the dark top of their table before extracting the frigid packages from under his arms. The ice was melting already, water soaking into the cotton cloths it was wrapped in.

Phineas glanced back up from his lap to examine his offerings. “In a variety of forms,” was the rasped response, aiming for humour but falling flat. And then, “why the glass?”

Phillip glanced at it.

“I thought you might want to rinse your mouth, there’s blood on your teeth...” He trailed off, and Phineas frowned, looking as though he hadn’t yet considered the metallic taste, before another thought crossed his mind. “Actually,” he added hesitantly, “are your teeth okay? There’s a lot of blood.”

Phineas appeared not to have considered that either, and a second passed before he swallowed and clenched his teeth, biting on nothing a few times before glancing back up.

“I… I think so,” he said, sounding unsure, and then a little more confidently. “I think it’s from my tongue.”

Phillip nodded, thankful that the blood wasn’t from an injury more permanent but still aching all the same, and then sat down at the chair perpendicular to his partner’s and took the towel from the bowl, twisting the water from it until it was damp and warm but no longer dripping. Phineas watched him, and then, when he was done, reached out to take the cloth.

Phillip took his hand instead, firmly but carefully, and then turned it until the knuckles were on top. He gently ran the cloth over the grazes and Phineas flinched lightly and dropped his eyes to their hands, but didn’t withdraw, allowing him to tenderly clean the blood from his softly bruising skin. He was aware what he was doing was like cleaning algae from a sinking ship; ineffectual at solving the root of the problem, but his broken heart ached to help, even if almost pointlessly cleaning dried blood from split skin was the only way Phineas would allow him to.

“You’ve been crying.”

Phillip’s cloth paused at his words, and he looked up to meet the curious hazel eyes watching him.

“Yes,” he agreed, tone raw, because what else could he say, and then, “being upset isn’t anything to be ashamed of, you know?”

Phineas hummed noncommittally and tore his heavy eyes away.

The cleaning of his fingers and palm was completed in silence.

He took his hand back to his chest when it was released, the skin pink from scrubbing but no longer stained with red and wrapped it around his ribs once again. By the time Phillip had rinsed the darkened cloth in the bowl, ruby swirling into the once colourless liquid, and wrung it again, he had cautiously offered his left hand in its place.

He tried to keep the wince from his expression at the bruising, and although he wasn’t sure how successful he had been, it turned out not to matter as Phineas’ attention was caught by his swollen hand as well. He wriggled his curled fingers curiously and then experimentally tightened them into a fist. He winced himself, his inhale sharp.

“Careful,” Phillip scolded with more concern than force, and took the injured hand gently in his own. He washed it cautiously, applying so little pressure in an effort not to hurt that the damp cloth barely skirted the skin over the break, but slowly the blood lifted.

He rested it on the dark wood once it was clean, the cloth and water stained but the skin, although mottled rather than white, at least no longer red, before gently positioning one of the ice-filled cloths over the swelling. Phineas frowned at it, and Phillip wondered if the weight was hurting him. Neither removed it though, Phillip more than aware that unlike his cleaning, the ice may actually help even if it was unpleasant, and Phineas trusting.

A moment passed, not quite awkward, but the air heavy, anxious, and then Phillip glanced back up at his partner’s blank expression, emotions hidden behind his marred façade, and broke the silence.

“There’s blood on your head.” The statement was spoken as a question, tentative and cautious, and Phineas brow furrowed as his aching head puzzled out what was being asked of him.

“Oh, go ahead,” he muttered, agreeing but still glancing sharply up, momentarily cautious, when Phillip stood, his chair scraping on the hardwood below. He wrung the cloth, pink water trickling over his hands before falling into the bloodstained pool beneath, and then crouched, lifting his partner’s clumped fringe with in his left hand, and began to remove the dried, cracking blood from his forehead.

He cleaned the bruising skin around the wound with shaking hands, his fragile composure a hair’s width from crumbling again as the angry mark that fit so well with the toe of a boot was brought into sharp relief against his unnaturally pale skin. Phineas was quiet as he worked, troubled, bleary eyes watching, but his flimsy mask holding.

Barely a hiss escaped his lips as the cloth caught the edges of his split skin, but Phillip winced at his mistake, nervous apologies on his tongue as fresh blood beaded the cut. Crimson droplets dribbled lazily from the wound, forming pink trails over the wet skin above his brow. He dabbed at them ineffectively, and then then, realising he was doing little more than causing his partner further pain returned the cloth to the cooling water and picked up the second towel of ice.  Gently, he pressed it over the wound, more than aware there was little the coolness would do for the already vivid bruising, but the pack at least stemming the slow flow of blood from the split. He numbly hoped it might stop the darkening eye below from swelling too.

Phineas slowly unfurled the arm from his ribs and lifted a shaking hand to the towel and Phillip, realising what he was doing, allowed him to take over the job of holding the melting cloth of ice. He returned his own hands to the bowl of darkened water, wringing the cloth again.

Phineas flinched as the cloth was brought to his jaw, his face jerking from his tender hold and unconcealable fear clouding his bleary eyes before his forced composure struggled to return. He leant forwards again, his gaze returning to his lap. He looked embarrassed and almost angry at himself and then slipped his shaking hand from under the ice, running it roughly through his dishevelled waves, separating the clumps and sending dried ruby flakes drifting from his head like macabre snow.

He exhaled wetly, and Phillip swallowed, hurting too, and then reached up and took the fingers of Phineas’ broken hand tenderly in his and extracted them from the waves. He brought his hand to the table, softly running his thumb over his knuckles, and then placed the melting ice back on top.

“You don’t have to pretend to be okay, you know?” he told him gently, and haunted hazel eyes flickered up to meet his. Their gazes held for a fraction of a second, raw and open and pained, before he looked away, fixing on their loosely entwined hands instead. His knee was bouncing softly under the table, anxious and agitated, his fiddling hands stilled by his partners and the ice he was still holding to his bleeding head.

“I’m fine, Phil, really,” he protested quietly, his tone broken and shaky and tight with pain despite his words and Phillip swallowed his argument and released his hand with one final, tender squeeze. His heart ached at his partner’s stubborn act but if that was how Phineas wanted to deal with the events that had occurred, then, for now, he had to respect it.

Phineas didn’t flinch as he took the shaking cloth to his jaw for a second time, and then held statue still as he washed his cheek and chin and darkening jaw and then down the side of his neck, the cloth by now stained enough to leave faint pink tinge to his pale skin. He returned it to the bowl, swallowing nausea at the deepening redness of the water and the metallic tang of iron that hung thickly in the air.

“Are you okay?” Phineas asked, tone still heavy but looking concerned despite himself. “You look a little grey?”

Phillip blinked at him, at his worry, but then forced a tight, comforting smile onto his lips.

“I’m fine,” and then, after a pause; “there’s just a lot of blood.”

Phineas shrugged stiffly, feigning nonchalance.

“Head wounds are known for bleeding excessively,” he said dismissively and averted his eyes. Phillip hummed, disagreeing on the gravity of the situation but without the heart to argue and Phineas, judging by his refusal to meet his gaze, likely knew he was understating the seriousness too, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Phillip, heart aching, moved on.

“You mentioned a bottle?” he questioned instead, tipping his head curiously. Phineas looked a little relieved at the change in topic and glanced up again.

“Just here.” He indicated with his ice filled cloth, allowing a fresh, pink dribble of diluted blood to trickle free from the wound above his eyebrow. “But it isn’t bleeding anymore.”

Phillip hummed, not quite trusting his words, and then moved a step closer and gently moved the clumped hair aside in search of the wound. Fragments of brown glass fell from the dark waves, raining down upon the shoulder of his ruined shirt and tinkling to the wooden floor.

The spot the bottle had hit wasn’t hard to find; the lump left behind was almost egg sized and the skin on the top of it split and bloody and surrounded by numerous small cuts where the glass had shattered against his head. It looked nasty, but, Phillip realised, just as Phineas had said, it was no longer bleeding.

“See,” he said lightly, as though reading his mind, or perhaps just reading the look of surprised relief that flickered across his expression before he schooled it back. “I’m not a conman all the time, you know.” The words were spoken teasingly, a flimsy attempt at his usual wit, even if the bravado was lost in the tight tremor in his tone. Phillip was sure one of his eyebrows was raised in forced humour below the ice.

“Stop it, Phineas,” he snapped before he could stop himself, upset and unfairly frustrated with the injured and hurting man, joking and teasing despite his anxious eyes and the uncontainable flinches and the fact that he had been beaten half to death. Phineas’ eyes widened at his words, and while he didn’t flinch, he certainly stiffened in his seat, before his eyes dropped again to his lap.

Guilt flooded heavily into Phillip’s gut, mixing nauseously with the worry already swimming there and his expression dangerously close to crumpling. It had been a long evening, more emotionally than in terms of time, and he was exhausted, worn by holding in the terror and panic that had come when Helen had first pounded on his door and the aching concern that had followed even after he found Phineas alive and conscious.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, voice tight, apologising because despite the teasing remark, he knew very well that he wasn’t finding the situation at all funny; it was just his coping method.

Phineas looked up again, their pained gazes catching.  

“It’s okay, you’re emotional, I know,” he reassured, a faint smile on his lips and his frail mask still holding. “it’s been an awful evening for you.”

He was trying to be comforting, Phillip knew, which awfully wrong in itself; he should be the one being comforted. It was him who was sitting stiffly in the chair, his head bleeding from where he had been kicked and his hand broken and swelling and his ribs painful, likely fractured too, unable to sit without pain or walk unaided. It was him who had been injured by five brutal, drunken men, and him who had been kicked into unconsciousness as he lay on the floor. And yet, it was him who was somehow determined to pretend to be okay.

Phillip hated it.

He hated the pain he was in and he hated what had happened to cause it. He hated the men who had beaten the man he loved so brutally, and he hated himself for being so weak. He even hated Phineas for thinking he needed to pretend to be okay in the one place and with the one person he should be most comfortable. And most of all, he realised, he hated the irrepressible flinches his partner gave as he sat in their warm and well-lit dining room, uncomfortable and anxious even in the sanctuary of his own home.

He shook his head lightly, not trusting his voice to respond, and turned away, returning to the bowl on the table to hide the rogue wetness again gathering in his eyes. He was so close to breaking, something Phineas was very clearly aware of too.

He wrung the cloth, rinsing it for longer than was necessary as he bottled it emotions once again and blinked the tears from his eyes, and then turned back to the hurting man before him.

Phineas bowed his head and allowed him to clean the blood from his dark waves as best he could, leaving them damp and slightly tacky but at least no longer stiff and clumped and smelling sickeningly of iron. Neither of them spoke as he worked, the air pregnant and filled with an agony that one of them would not admit to. It was a waiting game, Phillip’s aching heart knew; there was only so long Phineas could act for, but he would be there for him when he fell.

They physician’s knock came loud and sharp and unexpected startling them both. Phineas flinched violently under his hands and he looked down to find his expression anxious, hazel eyes again wide and fearful and his pink teeth worrying his split lower lip before the mask was dragged back into place. Phillip, heart breaking at both the mask and the need for it silently removed his hands and the cloth from his hair, tenderly teasing his drying fringe back into place.

“I’m sorry,” he told him, his voice brittle, as he tenderly ran his knuckles down the grazed and bruising cheek, feeling almost sick with himself because despite knowing that what he was doing was necessary, it was hurting the man he loved all the same. Phineas said nothing, averting his eyes and Phillip swallowed heavily and dropped his hand to go and allow the man into their home. He glanced back as left the room, his stomach clenching at the harrowing look of betrayal plastered on his partner’s bruising face.

The examination that followed was swift and to the point, the hour late and the physician impatient.

Phineas’ mask had held at first, staying fixed and firm whilst they talked about what had happened, and the flinch he had given when the man had approached with a syringe of morphine had been small and easily missed if you weren’t expecting it. The effect of the drug had been almost instantaneous, though; the tension that had been held in his shoulders since they returned home dissipating and the tightened creases unfolding from beside his eyes. 

He had allowed his head to be examined without fuss afterwards, his composure holding as the physician inspected the cuts and bruises and pushed experimentally at his jaw, and then his hand too, flinching only in pain when the injured bone was probed to judge its alignment before a stiff splint was fitted.

He had been asked to remove his shirt and waistcoat after that, and he had fumbled with the buttons, his still trembling fingers struggling to push the tiny rounds of ivory through their holes, before finally succeeding and slipping the shirt and the waistcoat as one from his shoulders and allowing them to fall to the seat behind him. His gaze had fallen to his lap, his eyes carefully averted at the low, pained whisper of ‘ _Phin_ ’ that had escaped Phillips lips at the sight of his chest and stomach, still muscular and dusted with dark hair but the once perfect skin now mottled and darkening in ugly, boot shaped patches.

The physician looked almost a little shaken too, his mouth opening and then closing again before he coughed and regained his composure.

Phineas flinched as the man’s hands came into contact with his chest, and the physician apologised for the coldness despite each of them knowing that wasn’t what had caused the movement at all. He felt along Phineas ribs, drawing tears from his eyes and grunts from his lungs and then an awful insuppressibly cry of when he had stumbled across a displaced break lurking beneath a particularly dark patch of skin. Phillip had flinched at the sound, swallowing the bile that rose from his swirling stomach and biting his lip almost hard enough to draw blood of his own. The muffled groan Phineas made as another was discovered was more contained, anticipated, but heart-breaking all the same.

He had all but collapsed into the chair beside his partner after that and had taken his hand, rubbing a comforting thumb tenderly over his bruising knuckles in a useless attempt to sooth even a little of his pain. Phineas’ gaze had flickered over to him, a weak, thankful smile playing on his pinched lips and had given his hand a returning squeeze.

The resetting of his ribs was awful for both of them, Phineas crying out despite the opiate, his expression crumpling and a cold sweat glistening on his brow, and Phillip’s heart shattering in his chest. His hand ached from the tightened one of Phineas’ around it, but he didn’t complain, how could he when the man he loved was tortured so beside him? And so Phillip had sat there, the clammy hand still held in his, as his broken bones were encouraged back into vague alignment, trying to be strong for the man who needed it but knowing in his heart he was failing entirely.

It was over, eventually, leaving them both shaking and pale and hurting.

Phineas was indeed concussed, too, the physician had told them so whilst he was stitching the split on his forehead, neatly aligning the skin so as not to scar. The concussion was somehow only mildly despite the two vicious blows he had taken, but enough that he would likely be dizzy and nauseous and his head aching and slow for the next few days. Although, Phillip realised, his chest clenching, much of him would likely be hurting and sore for a good while longer than that. Phineas said nothing, his eyes closed and his posture tight as he struggled to retain the few fragments left of his shattered composure.

Phillip saw him out afterwards, when he was finally, finally done, leaving them with a bottle of syrup for the pain and a recommendation for bedrest and ice. He irrationally hated him for what he had done, but knew the pain he had caused was necessary, a result of the brutal five men from the street than his attempt to repair the damage they had caused.

Phineas was resting against the table when he returned, his posture slumped despite his bandaged ribs and his troubled eyes heavy, drooping despite the pain. Phillip, heart still aching, went to him, and all but fell into the chair beside him, leaning an elbow on the table. Phineas looked up and their eyes caught, his unnaturally dark, his pupils blown with morphine and holding hazily to Phillip’s worried blue.

“I’m sorry, Phin,” he breathed, his voice heavy with guilt and grief at what he had indirectly put his partner through. He tried to keep his hurt bottled, but his expression must have shown more of his thoughts than he wanted, emotions leaking through his fragile composure worn thin by the upset and worry and guilt that had plagued him relentlessly since Helen had arrived at his door because Phineas shook his head lightly and forced what was intended to be a small, reassuring smile sloppily onto his pale lips.

“I’m okay, Phillip,” he comforted again, a drowsy slur to his tight words, and then his smile grew into one of vague amusement. “You worry too much, you’ll go grey before me, you know.”

Phillip sighed thickly and then, after a heavy second, stood.

“We should get you to bed before you fall asleep there.”

“I’m not tired,” Phineas protested, no fire to his words, as he allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He stumbled once he was up, dizzy from his wounded head and drowsy with opiates, and blinked blearily as Phillip steadied him, pulling his arm around his shoulders for support. He leant against him, warm and solid, as he led him from the room. 

Despite his words, Phillip didn’t miss the anxious glance he couldn’t help but give the front door as they passed, his anxious eyes flicking briefly to the bolt pulled again across the top and a hint of vulnerability creeping into his expression, mask loosened by pain and morphine. He gave his waist a gentle squeeze and tipped his head against his partner’s shoulder. 

“It’s okay to be shaken, you know?” he breathed softly, expecting a protest but receiving only a distracted hum in response. 

Phineas slept soundly that night, taken into unconsciousness by the heavy drugs almost before Phillip had got him into his pyjamas and cleaned the blood from his teeth and the remainder still clumped in his hair. His breathing slowed as soon as Phillip had arranged him in bed, propped upright on a small army of pillows in a vain attempt to placate his ribs, and within seconds of his head hitting the upmost pillow, the morphine had dragged him into slumber.

Phillip did not sleep that night, lying beside the blissfully unconscious man but never finding the relief himself. His thoughts raced, ‘what if’s playing through his mind despite the presence of the very man they were about beside him and the knowledge that the two girls he had been with were also safely home and likely also asleep. Worry churned in his gut, unpleasant and nauseating, about the fragility of his partner’s mask and about his unhealthy desire to wear it and about the pain he would be in when the morphine wore off.

Phillip was woken from the uneasy doze it felt he had slipped into only moments before by Phineas’ low, pained moan as he woke confused and hurting, his arms wrapping around his chest and his features crumpling, and he stumbled from his bed to retrieve the syrup they had left downstairs the night before, sleep already a distant memory. He brought tea up, too, and helped his partner swallow both before settling down beside him on the bed, his movement’s cautious, and took his hand in his, running his thumb over the bruised knuckles until the medicine brought its eventual relief and took him back to sleep.

Phineas spent much of the early morning drifting, drowsy and his mind slow and muddled and blurred from a combination of the concussion and the morphine, but at least not hurting as he had been when he first woke. Phillip lay beside him for most of it, attempting to nap more himself, but his mind again too busy to allow it, instead watching the shallow rise and fall of Phineas’ bandaged chest as he dozed. He briefly left him to fetch a pencil and paper, and wrote two telegrams, one to Charity, and the other to Lettie and then again to pass them to the neighbour’s youngest son to take.

By mid-morning, though, he was wide awake and worryingly nauseous, the medicine sending his stomach swirling and the tea Phillip had convinced him to drink threatening to make a violent return to the room. He had lay against his pillows, his skin clammy and grey and his features tight in apprehension of his unsettled stomach revolting. Phillip had found himself sat close beside him, one hand carding through his matted hair, reading softly to him from the book propped against his bent legs until he was once again asleep.

He had woken later, hurting but at least no longer nauseous, and despite the pain, Phillip hadn’t tried to convince him to take another dose, fearful of the damage he could cause to his recently realigned ribs if the unsettle the morphine caused his stomach developed into something more.

To his despair though, the decent from the numbness of the painkiller brought with it the return of the mask.

Despite Phillip’s protests, Phineas rose after that, a hand paused on the headboard as he rode out the wave of dizziness before he stiffly shuffled to the wardrobe and then into the washroom.

Phillip dressed in the bedroom whilst he waited for him to return, and then opened the curtains and combed his hair and made the bed just for something to do before settling back on top of the blankets, fingers tapping impatiently on his book as his eyes skimmed the same lines over and over.

His gaze rose at the click of the lock to see the door swing open and Phineas limp through, squinting a little in the bright grey of the sky shining through the large windows.

Phillip wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have opened the curtains; the light was hurting him, and, selfishly, he hated the sharpness the brightness brought to his wounded features. He looked a little better than he had before; now wearing dark trousers and an age-softened pale blue shirt in place of old pyjamas and with his bruised chest bare save for the bandages, and having shaved the dark stubble from his chin and styled his hair with the fringe forwards over his forehead. There was little he could do to hide the bruising along his jaw or the split of his lip, though, and nothing that could cover the angry blackness that had surrounded the eye beneath the stitched cut just above his eyebrow.

Phillip swallowed, and Phineas glared.

“I don’t require constant supervision,” he almost growled, as he threw his pyjamas onto the bed and then left the room, leaving Phillip hurting on the bed, the well-worn book in his hands.

Minutes passed before he followed Phineas downstairs, finding the man in question standing in the kitchen, leaning almost casually against the stove. He was waiting for the kettle to boil, to make tea, judging by the pot already sitting on the counter, his head turned towards the window and his distant gaze on the vaguely organised chaos that was their garden. He startled when Phillip spoke, and they both pretended he hadn’t.

“Would you like a hand?” he offered, his tone a failed attempt at casual as he stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle. Phineas glanced up again, his expression defensive.

“I’m capable of brewing tea, Phillip.” His tone was short, the words snapped and irritated.

Phillip forced his eyebrows not to raise.

“I never said you weren’t.”

A moment passed, the atmosphere pregnant, and then Phineas’ angry expression fell to one of mild guilt and he exhaled and looked away. He was annoyed with himself for snapping, Phillip knew.

“You should probably pour the water,” he admitted quietly, and held up his bandaged dominant hand pointedly, his dark eyes flicking up briefly.

Phillip swallowed, relieved.

“Okay.” And then, after a heavy second; “thank you.”

Phineas tipped his head once, neither quite a nod nor a shake, and then limped from the room, taking himself away once.

Phillip found him sitting uncomfortably on the sofa, his posture stiff and his gaze again distant, focused on little other than the wall opposite. He was deep in thought and looked more than a little lost. As was expected, he flinched upon noticing Phillip’s arrival, and as was becoming usual, they both pretended he hadn’t.

They drank the tea in silence, both sat at separate ends of the sofa and both lost in their own separate trains of thought. The seconds ticked slowly by, counted by the tormenting grandfather clock in the corner of the room, and Phillip wondered how long this was going to last, how many seconds would tick by before their warped sort of normality returned.

“I’m going to fetch my book, would you like anything?” he asked eventually, just for something to say and something to do. Phineas shook his head, and so he stood and collected their empty cups and was half way towards the door before his partner spoke.

“We should be at the circus?”

Phillip frowned at his words, both because although they would normally be true, it sounded as though he had just realised so, and because the idea of Phineas being at work in his state was beyond unreasonable. He was hurting more as the medicine continued to wear off, his eyes pinching as the pain returned in full and his posture stiff and movements cautious and his arms bracing his injured ribs. Phillip knew it would likely be weeks before it would be sensible for him to return to work, and many more than that until he would be ready to perform again.

He shook his head.

“I sent Lettie a telegram whilst you were asleep saying neither of us would be in for a few days. She can handle the show for now,” he replied somewhat honestly, having actually told Lettie that although he would likely return in a couple of days, Phineas would probably, hopefully, be absent for a while longer. She had sent a reply, tentatively asking what had happened to result in such absences, but he had yet to find the words or courage to explain.

“You should go.”

Phineas was looking at him, his expression schooled into calm nonchalance but his eyes anxious. The protest almost sounded forced, as though he knew that was what he would normally say. The show must go on, after all.

Phillip shook his head.

“Not today,” he argued softly, and for a reason known only to himself, Phineas dropped his act and didn’t reply. He appeared almost relieved, at not being left alone or at Phillip not making the same journey he had tried to make the night before, he wasn’t sure, and the expression was gone so quickly he knew not to ask. 

Phillip returned with the spare blanket from their bed and a couple of the extra pillows he had sourced the night before and the bottle of medicine they had abandoned on Phineas’ bedside drawers along with the book he had originally left for.

Phineas startled up as he noisily opened the door, his hands clumsy and full, and then frowned in irritation at the collection he held clasped in his arms.

“I don’t need mothering.” His tone was hard again, just as it had been in the kitchen, so out of character Phillip paused, almost cautious, before he stepped further into the room.

“If you want to be alone, I can leave,” he said, voice surprisingly level, “but at least allow me to help you sit more comfortably first. There is no point in denying you’re in pain, Phineas.”

Phineas looked at his lap, his features thrown into shadow, but what little of his expression not hidden was a strange mixture of guilt and anger. There was a pause and then he nodded, and Phillip swallowed and properly entered the room. He placed his bundle on the coffee table, and then took the pillows and slowly, carefully, eased his hurting partner into a more relaxed position.

He ended up sitting sideways, his legs stretched out along the length of the sofa, his bruised knee bent over a cushion and his back against the pillows Phillip had propped against the arm. He leant his head against the back, his eyes closed as he waited for the pain to settle. His breathing was shallow again.

“You could take a half dose,” Phillip suggested, eyeing the small bottle on the table, and Phineas looked at it, seeming almost tempted before he shook his head.

“I’ll be okay in a minute.”

Phillip swallowed and then shrugged in faux indifference. “I’ll leave it here for you anyway, and there’s a blanket just in case.” He picked up the book with a trembling hand. “I’ll be in the dining room.”   

There was no response to he turned and headed to the door. He had almost made it from the room when Phineas spoke.

“You don’t have to go.”

He paused in the doorway at the soft words, turned back to look at his partner. His expression was blank except a light furrow in his brow, but his eyes were anxious and open, and Phillip realised that although he didn’t want comforting or company, he didn’t really want to be left alone either.

Phillip understood entirely.

A small, sad smile grew on his lips and he nodded and muttered a soft ‘okay’ before he crossed back to the sofa. Phineas curled his legs, allowing him to sit, and so he did and pulled his bare feet onto his lap, giving a cold ankle a squeeze. It wasn’t unusual for Phineas to not wear socks at home when the weather was warm, but that morning had dawned with a chill despite the mild evening that had come before and he assumed his lack of socks was more due to his current physical state and the pain he knew the act of bending over to them pull would bring than a desire not to wear them that day. It was very likely the reason he was wearing nothing more than his shirt too.

Phillip’s stomach clenched in sympathy, and he leant forwards and picked the blanket from the table, spreading it over the both of them. Phineas didn’t protest, just as he didn’t protest when his hand returned to his foot, his thumb rubbing softly over the hard bone of his ankle.

He glanced up after a few minutes to find him settled back into his pillows, his eyes closed in faux sleep, perhaps avoiding conversation, perhaps hoping if he pretended for long enough unconsciousness might eventually find him again.

The afternoon passed almost sluggishly. Phillip spent it sat on his side of the sofa, beside his partner and yet so far away, with his book propped up against Phineas’ feet. His eyes skimmed the pages, reading but never quite understanding the words, too preoccupied with the hurting man beside him as he waited for the inevitable to arrive.

Phineas alternated between dozing fitfully, still drowsy and headachy from the blows to his head, and staring anxiously out the window, lost in his own troubled thoughts. He complained half-heartedly he was bored around mid-afternoon, more for effect than because he actually was, Phillip was sure, but he read aloud to him anyway from the worn book while until he dropped back to fitful sleep. He stopped pretending to read after a while, gazing out the window himself with the book still open in his lap.

“You’ve read that before.”

He startled up to find Phineas awake again watching him, his head still lolled against the back of the sofa but his tight expression curious.

“Yes, quite a few times.”

“Why?” he asked, “you already know the ending?”

Phillip hummed. “Because it’s a good tale, and because it’s familiar, like returning home after a long day, and because… well, sentiment; this is the first book you bought me.”

Phineas smiled a little at that, it barely ghosting across his mask.

“I know,” he agreed, voice tight, and Phillip didn’t quite know what to say in response, and silence fell between them once again.

He left to make dinner shortly after that, needing a reason to escape and because although neither of them were hungry, neither of them had eaten that day either. Phineas seemed almost reluctant to be left alone, but with his refusal to take his pain-killing medicine came pain, enough that he was even more reluctant to attempt to try and extract himself from the sofa.

Dinner was a simple stew which they both picked at with little interest and even less appetite, and the evening that followed passed in much the same way as the afternoon before it.

That night, neither of them slept.

The second day followed a similar pattern, or the morning did anyway. Phineas was nauseous again, eventually giving in to taking a half-dose of the syrup when he woke sore enough that even sitting brought tears to his tightly clenched eyes. His breathing was still shallow, and Phillip knew soon he would have to broach the subject with him because with extended periods of shallow breathing came the risk of illness in the lungs; the physician had warned them so.

After a lunch they both ate little of, Charity and Caroline and Helen visited, and for a while, Phineas seemed a little less anxious than he had before. He was good with his girls, as he always was, and he sat on the sofa with one either side of him and reassured them he was okay when they asked, their expressions concerned as they eyed his bruised jaw and blackened eye and gave both of them a smile that so close to genuine he very nearly had Phillip fooled too. He didn’t flinch as Caroline cautiously stretched up and brushed away his fringe, exposing the stitched wound below, but reached up and take her hand in his, drawing it away from his head.

“I’m okay, Caroline,” he told her, and gave her hand a squeeze.

He asked them what they had done that day, and let them chatter on, tense but playing along with is act, about school and friends and homework and the games they had played. He told them a tale of fairies and goblins and a wishing well when they seemed to run out of things to say and although they were both getting a little old for his stories, they listened quietly all the same.

Phillip watched, and Charity watched too, both aware he wasn’t as nearly well held together as the front he was putting on for his girls, for all of them, suggested. They left soon after a dinner Charity prepared for them all, one that Phineas did at least eat a little of, heading home after a tense goodbye and instruction to take a carriage and lock the door once they were back. Charity pressed a kiss to his cheek as she left and held his hand as she told him she would be there if she needed him. His façade slipped a little at that, but neither of them mentioned it. 

The evening passed slowly, and again, neither of them slept soundly that night. Phineas would eventually drift off, troubled and in pain but his healing body demanding rest, before waking shortly after with a sudden, painfully deep gasp. His dreams were plagued with nightmares, of what, he wouldn’t tell, but Phillip could easily guess. Sometime around dawn Phillip coaxed him into taking more of the medicine in the hope that he would be able to get at least a little peaceful sleep with its help. Phillip lay awake beside him throughout the night, exhausted but his troubled mind too busy to rest. He must have fallen asleep eventually, though, because he was abruptly woken from his doze by a flailing fist colliding with his skull. It was Phineas’ bandaged one, and no mark was left, so he reasoned there would be no need to mention it.

The third day was somehow harder.

Phineas was still in pain, his ribs leaving him in a near constant state of discomfort only made worse by the deep breaths Phillip had finally plucked up the courage to demand he take, and deeply troubled, anxious and flinching no matter how hard he tried to supress it. The mask still held, and Phillip sat diligently beside him, his aching heart yeaning to help, to hold him gently, for everything to be okay, but unable to do anything to make the situation better for the hurting, stubborn man.

By the end of the third day, the atmosphere in the apartment was stifling, both of them hurting and sleep deprived and tense, and neither of them knowing how to solve it.

The sun was just dawning on the fourth day when Phillip was woken from his fitful sleep by a gasped cry and the feel of the mattress jolting. He opened his eyes, unsurprised by the suddenly routine awakening, and blinked them into focusing to find Phineas sitting on the edge of the bed. His posture was hunched, curled over with his elbows on his knees despite his ribs and his head in his hands, the fingers entwined tightly in his dark hair. They would be pulling, Phillip knew, holding onto the soft waves with enough force to hurt in an effort to ground himself.

His breathing was shaky, wet and shallow and useless, and then as Phillip listened, a supressed sob bubbled from his lips. His heart broke in his chest at the sound, and despite his partner’s wish to be alone, Phillip found himself pushing himself from his side of the bed. He took himself to the other side, and then knelt before his partner and gently pried the hands from his hair, holding them in his afterwards, relived when no attempt was made to pull them from his grasp. He looked up into the tortured, wet eyes, fearful and sorrowed and finally, finally open.

“Phin, please,” he breathed, his own voice tight, breaking, and was saved from working out what to say next by Phineas shaking his head, words spilling from his trembling lips.

“I’m okay, just go back to bed,” he choked, protesting. The salted trails on his cheeks caught the faint light of the sunrise as he turned away, averting his gaze. As Phillip watched, another tear leaked from his blackened eye, and he pulled a hand free from Phillip’s to rub it forcefully away. He was angry with himself for crying. “Please, Phil, just go, I’m okay!” His voice broke as he said the words, and Phillip’s heart shattered.

“You’re not okay, Phin,” he said softly, reaching up to cup his sticky cheek, wiping a rouge tear away with the pad of his thumb. Phineas let him, staying statue still beneath his palm. “What do you keep dreaming about?”

Phineas sniffled and looked up, dislodging his hand and his damp hazel eyes going to the ceiling. “It’s foolish.”

“I would consider nothing that upsets you to this extent foolish.”

Silence fell, and Phillip let it hang, watching Phineas’ torn expression as he stared at the whitewashed plaster above them. He was worrying his lip again, teeth playing on the healing split, but Phillip couldn’t find the words to stop him.

“I keep dreaming of those men,” he admitted eventually, eyes still averted, distant. “Sometimes it’s just me, and I can cope with that, but sometimes Caroline and Helen are there too, or Charity, or you, and sometimes… sometimes-” he broke off, his tone breaking and a little distressed. There was a pause and then he drew in a shuddering breath. “I know it isn’t real, I know they’re safe and you and Charity too, but... it just seems so real.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Phillip, I… go back to bed, please? I’m okay.”

Phillip sighed softly, and then said the words that had needed to be said since they returned home that awful evening. “You’re not okay, Phin. But I think you know that as well as I do.”

Phineas huffed wetly, disagreeing as though he thought he had to, and his bright gaze fell to his lap and the bandaged hand that rested there. It was picking anxiously at the hem of his shirt, the fabric caught between his thumb and forefinger. Phillip placed his over the top, stilling their nervous work.

“I know you have to be strong for the girls,” he said, his words tight with pent up emotion. “And I know you want to be strong for Charity too, and I know you will feel you need to be strong in front of our friends at the circus, and the audience and everyone else who knows you too.” He paused, and gave the hands in his a squeeze, and when he next spoke his voice was raw. “But, Phin, you don’t have to pretend to be okay for me. You don’t need to hide your feelings, not from me, not at home.”

Phineas shook his head in protest.

“I’m okay,” he insisted desperately, eyes burning and wet and the words entirely unconvincing. Phillip swallowed his own rapidly swelling emotions.

“You’re not fine, Phin, but that’s okay; something awful happened to you, and now you’re hurting, but that to be expected. To be honest I’d be worried if you weren’t shaken by it. You’re not okay,” he repeated, “but one day you will be again, and it might take you a little while to get there, but I’m going to be here for you however long it takes.”

There was a pause, Phineas breathing wetly, his head still bowed, and his flimsy mask so fragile as light breeze would set it crumbling. He seemed torn though, caught between his eternal desire to pretend he wasn’t hurting and accepting the soft reassurances falling from his partner’s lips. Phillip’s aching heart hammered in his throat.

“It doesn’t make you weak to admit you’re not okay, you know?” he said softly, and for some reason, it was with that that the final fragments of the brittle façade Phineas had been wearing for days shattered and his expression crumpled. Fresh, honest tears brimmed, leaking from his eyes, and joined the salty trails already pathed down his cheeks.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, Phil,” he admitted, his voice small and raw and hurting. “I hear them in your footsteps, and I feel their punches when you touch me and their kicks on my ribs, and I see them, out of the corner of my eyes and I know they’re not there, I know it’s mad, but I do. And I know they’re in jail, and they can’t hurt anyone else any more, but I can’t help but worry that they will, that they’ll get to Caroline or Helen, or Charity, or you, or someone else at the circus, or, or…” he trailed off, his shaking, wet words lost, and shook his head, pulling his hands free to wipe angrily at his tears.

Phillip let him, and then, when his gaze had returned he said, “It’s okay, Phin, just say it,” his voice soft and encouraging, and his eyes fixed comfortingly on the broken hazel ones before him. Phineas swallowed, his mouth opening and closing but no sound escaping before he swallowed again, regaining a little composure.

He drew in shaking breath, and said, “I can’t help but worry they’re going to come back for me,” his voice choked and wet and shaking and then, his defences broken, he let out a sob. Phillip stood, and took him in his arms, wrapping them round the hunched, hurting man, holding him tightly despite his ribs and rocking him gently, his chin resting on the top of his matted curls. There was a moment where Phineas resisted, but then he all but sagged into the embrace, his head burrowing into Phillip’s shoulder as he sobbed. His eyes were wet, the tears soaking into his shirt and the salt staining, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered more than the man he loved currently crying in his arms.

They breathed in shuddering synchrony, both upset and hurting but finally, finally admitting it, open to each other once again, and so, with nothing else to say, they simply held each other, swaying softly and silently together. Phillip’s hand ran tenderly over his partner’s back in time with the rhythm and Phineas’ clutched at his shirt, the thin fabric held in his shaking hands as though he could never bare to let him go again.

They stayed there, holding each other as the seconds ticked by, until Phineas calmed a little, his sobs subsiding and his gasped breaths slowing into a more natural rhythm. Phillip turned his head and pressed a tender kiss onto the top of his partners.

“You’re going to be okay, Phin,” he muttered into his soft, lightly curling hair, “not now, and maybe not even soon, but, one day, you will be.”

 

Everything improved a little after that, and although Phineas was still injured, and although he still flinched, at least he was no longer trying to hide it. He was still quiet, and his thoughts still wandered back to that night, but he was at least less irritable, less tense, and marginally less anxious.

Phillip returned to the circus on the fifth day, reluctant to go until Phineas had thrown a cushion at his head in response to his weak argument that the curiosity of their absences would bring an audience, a genuine smile on his lips for the first time in days. He had come home, returning in a carriage just as he promised he would, to find Phineas asleep on the sofa, his knees curled up to fit his long frame into the shorter seat, but his expression peaceful. He had been reluctant to wake him but had; a night on the sofa would do him little good and had then helped him up the stairs and into bed where he fell asleep again in Phillip’s arms.

Phineas returned to the circus on the 12th day, healed enough that that carriage ride would be tolerable, and although he was anxious, fiddling relentlessly with his splint for the entirety of the carriage ride, and uncomfortable with the sympathetic looks he inevitably received, the news of what had happened widely known, and although he flinched at the arrival of anyone and everyone at his office door, he seemed relieved to be back, and at least comfortable within the walls of the circus just as he had grown to be at home.

Time passed, as time tends to do, and as it did, Phineas healed. The cuts closed, scabbing and then scarring lightly, and the stitches were removed from his forehead and the bruises faded from an angry purple to a sickening green. Slowly, his ribs fused enough that he could at least breathe without pain, and eventually the splint was removed from his hand, leaving it stiff and weaker than before but no longer broken. His wild, and at times a little odd, sense of humour gradually returned too, the teasing jokes no longer out of a desperation to appear his normal self, as did the beautiful, blinding, and honest smile Phillip loved so much.

Progress was being made, and slowly, things improved.

Phineas returned to the ring three months to the day after the attack. It was a coincidence, but one he picked up on and mentioned, finally comfortable enough with what had happened to bring it up unprompted. He had been jittery all day, not quite nervous, but more understanding there was more riding on this performance than there had been on any he had done for years. Everyone knew what had happened to him, it had been in the paper, after all, and for him, this was his chance to show that although he had been hurt, he had not been broken.

That afternoon he had sat restlessly at his desk, fiddling and tapping and twirling his pens until one had been accidentally flicked across the room, missing Phillip’s nose by a margin. He had gone for a walk after that in an attempt to dispel his excess energy, and Phillip had after a pause risen from his seat and gone with him, their hands held.  

Phillip waiting in the wings for the show to start, stomach tight with anticipation, and Charity and Caroline and Helen waited in the stands. The audience was packed, the news that he was finally returning drawing a crowd, just as they had expected it to. There was a low, curious hum over the audience that night, no one quite knowing what to expect from the ringleader who had been recovering for so long.

The lights dimmed, and the murmuring stopped and then the familiar, deep voice reverberated from deep behind the stands. Phillip’s heart stuttered, thrilled as it had been the first night he had seen the show. The singing continued, and then the spotlights came on, lighting the ringleader standing tall and strong and clad in red between the rows of wooden benches. The music changed, and then the show began.  

Phineas was alive and vibrant and burning with energy as he burst onto the stage, and he seemed happy and confident and free as he sang and danced as though he didn’t have a care in the world. It was partially an act, Phillip knew, he was still sore, his ribs still yet to fully heal, and he had been uncharacteristically nervous as he waited backstage, his palm sweaty in Phillip’s hand, but the brief, brilliantly bright grin he shot him during a pause in the dance was genuine, reaching his eyes and crinkling the skin beside them beautifully. Phillip found he couldn’t help but smile too, because although they were still not quite there, not quite yet okay, things were improving, slowly but surely, and one day, he knew they would be.


End file.
